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^^ The Notion^Counter 

A FARRAGO o/ FOIBLES 



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Book r- 



rOFYRIGltr DEPOSIT. 



THE NOTION-COUNTER 



The Notion-Counter 

A FARRAGO o/ FOIBLES 
Being Notes About Nothing 

Sy NOBODY 
ILLUSTRATED BY SOMEBODY 




DEDICATED TO EVERYBODY 



THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS 
BOSTON 



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3^0° 



l\lt 



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Copyright, 192a, by 
The Atlantic Monthly Prbss 



Printed in the United States of America 



JUN -3 1S22 



CONTENTS 

Pagb 

The Notion-Counter 1 

On Dyeing 5 

Shell-Shock in a Shoeshop 11 

Millinery Madness 16 

The Passing of the Old Lady 21 

Visited on the Children 25 

"Now Who Shall Arbitrate?" 31 

1. Cynthia's Husband 31 

2. Clarence's Wife 36 

My Wife's Address-Book 41 

My Wife's Check-Book 48 

My Wife's "Telaphib" List 55 

Woman versus Women 63 

Mrs. O 'Toole AND Venus . 67 

My Architectural Friends 75 

Parables in Motors 80 

Reel-Life 84 

Pots and Kettles 90 

What Kind of a Snob Are You? 95 

Such Stuff as Dreams Are Made On ... . 102 



IN certain of these Notes about 
Nothing — many of which first ap- 
peared in the "Contributors* Club" of 
the Atlantic Monthly — "Nobody" has 
ventured to masquerade as a woman; 
in others "Nobody" has counterfeited 
to be a man. 



The Notion -Counter 



THE other day a parable was suggested to my mind 
by the sight of a loquacious country-woman wan- 
dering through the intricacies of a large city de- 
partment-store. I watched her approach an impressive 
individual^ who appeared to combine the functions of 
floorwalker and stargazer, and put her case before him 
for solution. 

"/ want to find the counter where they sell cute little 
knickknacks ," she began confidentially; "the kind of 
things nobody wants, but that are real nice to take home to 
the folks. I aint got the 
money to squander on any 
of these kind of vanities 
and folderols'' (this with 
a comprehensive gesture 
that swept the horizon). 
"I want to find somethin 
kind of odd, such as clus- 
ters of pins that look like 
blackberries, and emery- 
bags that look like radish- 
es, and pincushions that 




The Notion-Counter 



look like tomatoes, and sort of comical things that 
aint what they seem.'' 

The superman winced perceptibly, and pointed a very 
definite forefinger towards a remote corner. " What you 
want is the Notion- Counter,** he firmly announced. *'Go 
past the 'Finery from France* and leave 'Luxuries in 
Leather^ behind you; the Notion- Counter is what you are 
looking for.** 

As I began by saying, this little incident suggested to 
my mind an allegory in which a department-store should 
become the modern symbol of Vanity Fair, through which 
twentieth-century Christians {or at any rate their wives 
and daughters) must pass on their way to the Celestial 
City, where, we hope, there are no bargains and no bar- 
gain-hunters. 

How suggestive is the very name of the Notion-Counter! 
Here one does not look for convictions, for faiths , or for 
hopes; but ''notions** can be picked up like the coveted 
blackberries of the little country-woman. 

We can imagine the bewildered pilgrim* s progress 
through the maze of such a great centre of retail trade, try- 
ing to coordinate her desires. She passes the Small-Talk 
Counter and scorns the Gossip Department. Even the 
Anecdotal Corner of the Slander Section fails to interest 
her, though she is given a sample of a story that is both 
long and broad, and undeniably cheap. 



The Notion-Counter 



" Could we interest you in Habits ? " inquires an eager 
floorwalker. ** They are custom-made, and so they are 
never sent on approval. Habits can never be changed.^* 

'' I form my own habits, and one of them is never to 
wear one when I ride,'* the customer curtly replies; and 
that subject is closed. 

''Are you sure, madam," continues the un-snubbable 
official — *'are you sure that, even if you do not care to 
observe Theories or to acquire Habits, you may not want 
some Real Facts? We have a new importation from 
Europe and they are warranted solid, not merely polished 
to look genuine, like those that were sent over to us in war- 
time.*' 

''No, I do not care even to look at Facts,** the shopper 
firmly proclaims; "you need not offer me any Advice, 
either. And your Ideals are frightfully high! I saw some 
at the Love- Counter, but they were far beyond me.** 

"We have some excellent values in Prejudices, all 
bound in hide,** the floorwalker suggests; "they are, of 
course, among the Gents* Furnishings** 

" You don*t seem to understand what I am looking for," 
Mrs. Christian interrupts impatiently. "I dont want 
anything real, like Ideas, or unreal, like Ideals, or any- 
thing to give away, like Advice, or to keep, like Command- 
ments. I *d like to find the counter of trivial Comments and 
Exaggerations, of marked-down remnants of Personal 
Observation, and Figures of Speech that are nt to be 



The Notion-Counter 



taken seriously. I want some of those silly little odds and 
ends that look like what they Ve not. I want to find the 
counter where they display frivolous and foolish Notions, 
that dont deserve to he called Opinions, I want — " 

** Why did nt you tell me before that you wanted No- 
tions 1" the thoroughly exasperated official exclaims, re- 
moving his mask of professional courtesy. '^Of course, if 
you want Notions, the Notion- Counter is what you want ! 
Turn to the left, go past the Ready-made-Opinion Depart- 
ment, leaving the section of Speculation behind you I The 
Notion- Counter is what you are looking for I " 



ON DYEING 



WHY is it that people who are employed in dye- 
house agencies are invariably confirmed pes- 
simists on all questions that touch their own 
profession ? Their spirits seem to have been subdued 
to that they work in, to have been dipped in the black- 
est of never-fading gloom. Melancholy has marked 
them for her own. Assuredly there should be in- 
scribed over the door of the dyehouse, as over the 
door of other death-cells, the classic phrase of doom: 
"All hope abandon, ye who enter here." 

My thesis is that the women employed in these 
mortuary temples have only one human trait, which 
is, that in spite of 
their profession, they 
do not want to dye. In 
order to prove the 
truth of this convic- 
tion, I started forth a 
few weeks ago on an 
investigating expedi- 
tion, carrying a large 
bundle under my arm. 
My package con- 
tained clothes, not old 




The Notion-Counter 



so much as middle-aged, some being really young, a 
baby's coat of spotless purity being among the more 
juvenile members of the hand-picked collection. 

Before entering the dyeing establishment, I paused 
to look in the cruelly deceptive shop-window. It pre- 
sented a gay scene of headless ladies exquisitely 
gowned in every shade of delicate pink, blue, yellow, 
and lavender. A placard bore the legend (I use the 
word advisedly) : "These dresses have all been dyed." 
Almost fearing that my theory was to be disproved, I 
entered and, placing my package on the marble tomb- 
stone of a counter, displayed the contents to a woe- 
begone female in black. Before I could explain what 
I wished to have done, the sallow saleslady summoned 
another human vulture from a hidden recess, and to- 
gether they looked, with stricken faces, at my articles 
of apparel, shaking their heads ominously as I dis- 
played my various exhibits. 

"I have brought in a few things to be dyed," I began 
cheerfully. "Now, this little coat — which is per- 
fectly clean, you see — I should like to have dyed 
light blue; this pink chiffon waist, which is a trifle 
soiled, I want to have dyed black; the little negligee I 
want pink, and this scarf lavender." 

While I was talking, the leading lady quietly re- 
moved the garments from my grasp and began rolling 
them up in the bundle again. 



On Dyeing 



"It is perfectly impossible, madam," she said in a 
tone of finality. "Your things cannot be dyed." 

"May I ask why not?" I inquired with quiet con- 
trol. "My garments are most of them white, and 
many are practically new." 

The undertaker's assistant now stepped forward, 
and in sepulchral tones made these disconnected an- 
nouncements, which sounded like texts from a free- 
thinker's burial service: — 

"The infant's coat has too much wool. We do not 
recommend dyeing chiffon. The morning sack (she 
pronounced it * mourning') is made of taffeta, which 
rots. The gauze scarf might possibly take a very 
dark—" 

But at this moment the tragedy-queen broke in. 

"We will take no responsibility, even about the 
scarf." 

The weird sisters had almost finished tying up my 
bundle again as I feebly protested: "But why do you 
advertise dyeing, why do you exhibit these dresses in 
the window, why do you — " 

One of the women held up a warning hand. "Your 
garments are not fit to dye" (I blushed for their evil 
lives) ; "we could take no responsibility for the result." 

"But if / am willing to take the responsibility," I 
protested in desperation, tearing open the bundle again, 
" how much should I have to pay for the experiment? " 



S The Notion-Counter 

The mutes exchanged a look, and in the character of 
pallbearers carried the corpus vile to some distant cave, 
whence, after a muttered colloquy held over the re- 
mains, they returned with the verdict: — 

''The scarf is the only article we are willing even to 
attempt. We are much rushed with business." (The 
receiving vault in which we stood was perfectly empty.) 
**We shall have to keep it seven weeks, and the only 
color it can take is a brownish-red. Even that we do 
not advise.** 

I almost smiled, they were so true to type. I had 
been waiting for that brownish-red suggestion. 

**That will be perfectly lovely," I said hastily; **and 
will you please charge the scarf and send it when it is 
finished? I have no account here," I added lightly, 
**but I can give good references." 

Hark! from the tombs a doleful sound. A mascu- 
line voice from behind the scenes proclaimed, "We 
never charge. It must be paid for C. O. D." 

My saleslady took her cue. "No, we never charge, 
and we cannot tell the exact cost. It will probably not 
exceed four dollars." 

"But the scarf cost only $2.50!" I gasped. 

Silence and stony indifference on the part of the 
officiating executive. 

"I think I will take my things somewhere else," I 
announced. And with no help this time from the af- 



On Dyeing 



fronted attendants, I made my exit, trailing clouds of 
paper and string as I departed to continue my investi- 
gations. 

It is unnecessary to recount my experiences at the 
five other establishments I visited, so similar were my 
reception and dismissal in all. There were slight va- 
riations on the original minor theme : sometimes my 
test cases had too much wool in their composition, 
sometimes too much silk ; the heaviness of their mate- 
rial would cause them to shrink, or their flimsiness 
would cause them to dissolve. The fabrics seemed 
doomed to perish if subjected even to that arid proc- 
ess known as dry cleansing. There were faint 
glimpses of brownish-red on the horizon, but even they 
flickered out, leaving me in utter darkness. 

At the sixth and last dyeing establishment I investi- 
gated, my cynicism received a slight setback. After 
the usual preliminary discouragements and refusals 
and whispered consultations, the shopgirl, who had 
not fully developed into the usual shop-ghoul betrayed 
unexpected symptoms of compassion. "I tell you 
what, lady," she at last conceded, ** there ain't a thing 
in your collection that's worth coloring; but if you 
want to leave the bundle at your own risk, we '11 do the 
best we can; only we're so busy that you can't get 
your things back for two months." 

"Very well," I replied, "I will take all risks. I 'm 



10 The Notion-Counter 

very much obliged to you for consenting to do some- 
thing that you advertise to do — it is unusual; and I 
will give you my name and address and pay C. O. D. 
if I am still living when my things are dyed." 

I thought I had really found the rare establishment 
that does what it advertises to do; and when, at the 
end of one week instead of eight, a letter came bearing 
the name of my dyehouse, my hopes rose high. Was I 
to hear that the firm had undergone conversion and 
would finish my work in a reasonable time? Was I to 
read some message of encouragement, *' We who are 
about to dye salute you," or some such appropriate 
word of cheer? No. The note stated that, after grave 
consideration, it had been decided that the risk of dye- 
ing any of my articles was too great — accordingly 
they were holding my bundle for further instructions. 
If I cared to have the scarf dyed a brownish-red in- 
stead of lavender — That day I read no more. I saw 
scarlet ^ — scarlet untinged with brown. I vowed then 
the act of vengeance I am now perpetrating. I would 
creep up unawares among these dyers who lie — and 
a stab in the back, dealt by an unknown hand, should 
cause these liars to dye. 



SHELL-SHOCK IN A SHOESHOP 

THIS small exposition of a social phenomenon is 
presented to the sorority of shoestore sufferers, 
merely in the hope that it will be diagnosed as 
correct, and not condemned as another extravagance 
of an embittered shopper. 

Things are seldom what they seem. The other day 
I went to what I supposed to be a mark-down sale of 
boots and shoes, but found instead that I was attend- 
ing a reception ; or perhaps it would be more correct 
to call the social function at which I found myself a 
leap-year party, because, in a shoestore, it is appar- 
ently always leap-year. 

Women in bevies were crowding and jostling each 
other just inside the entrance, shrilly demanding some 
particular clerk, the name of the coveted salesman ris- 
ing above the steady stream of feminine chatter with 
flattering insistence. I was deafened by the Babel of 
tongues among which various phrases crashed through 
into my consciousness. 

"Where is Mr. Johnson? I must have Mr. Johnson. 
He 's the only man that knows just what I want." 

"Is Mr. Jackson here? Say, Edna, do you mind 
just catching hold of that gentleman that *s talking to 
the fleshy woman in blue? He 's my special friend. All 



12 The Notion-Counter 

the others make me get shoes that are too big for me." 
i "Oh, Mr. Sampson, here I am! You know you told 
me to be sure and always ask for you." 

"Good morning, Mr. Benson. How are you this 
morning? Popular as ever, I see! I want you to show 
me the very latest thing in tango-slippers. I think 
everything of Mr. Benson," the speaker then an- 
nounced to all whom it might concern. And the moun- 
tain of flesh from whom this flattering declaration 
emanated forced her way toward her coveted idol, 
Mahomet being utterly unable to go to the mountain. 

I looked round me in despair. Each clerk was either 
surrounded by a group of ladies or having a confiden- 
tial chat with one alone on some cushioned sofa. 
Broken bits of conversation continued to assail my 
ears; sometimes the subject matter was such as would 
be tossed to and fro between any two people meeting 
at an afternoon tea ; sometimes there was an inter- 
change of personal gossip concerning the large world of 
society in which the majority of the shoe-purchasing 
and shoe-selling world seemed to move side by side. 
The feminine confidences to which I found myself lis- 
tening were the more astounding in their intimacy 
from the fact that often they were evidently being 
poured into the ear of a total stranger. A young girl in 
fur coat and pearl necklace bent confidentially toward 
a swain in whose blacking-stained palm her silk-stock- 



Shell-Shock in a Shoeshop 13 

inged foot was temporarily reposing, and exchanged 
ballroom badinage. Stout matrons repeated the latest 
mots of their grandchildren, or deplored the manners 
of the new generation, sure of a sympathetic listener 
at their feet. Somehow the intimacy implied by an 
appeal for sympathy always seems of the closest pos- 
sible brand. 

Among the confusion of faces, I suddenly detected 
the puzzled one of a rather deaf contemporary of my 
own. I made my way to her side, and indicating a 
confidential confessional that was in progress at a 
little distance I shouted, ** Don't you admire shoemen's 
sympathy?" 

She looked alarmed for my reason. "Schumann's 
Symphony?" she murmured vaguely. *'Why, yes, I 
think it 's beautiful, if you mean the one in D minor." 

This would never do. *' It 's no use trying to talk in a 
shoeshop," I yelled, backing away. 

"Did you say you had shell-shock? " my deaf friend 
inquired again. 

I nodded violently and withdrew to continue my 
observations. 

"Is this the new democracy? " I asked myself in a 
daze. But no. I have been to other mark-down sales. 
I have traveled from automatic attics to bargain base- 
ments, and everywhere the old order prevailed to the 
extent of the purchaser and the dispenser of wares 



14 



The Notion-Counter 



being separated by that imaginary equator which 
divides the seller and the sold. Perhaps the absence of 
that symbol of separation, the counter, explains the 
greater freedom of intercourse in the shoestore. But as 
I had come to buy boots and not to moralize, I de- 
cided to be very up-to-date and "cut in" on some 
confidential couple. Accordingly I boldly placed my- 
self beside a seal-skinned siren, who was discussing 
with her chosen partner a movie she had seen the night 
before, and said firmly: **I 
have come to buy some 
boots. Will you please wait 
on me when you are quite 
through talking to this 
lady?" 

My sarcasm passed un- 
heeded. Without glancing 
my way, the clerk merely^, 
pointed to a distant corner 
and replied: **I am busy. Perhaps one of those other 
gentlemen can attend to you." 

It was in that corner, neglected and alone, that I 
evolved the theory that the shoeman is as yet in a 
state of transition. He is an unclassified animal, a sort 
of social Soko, or missing link. Perhaps eventually he 
will arise from his ** probably arboreal" crouch, and 
will stand upright on two legs and proclaim himself 




Shell-Shock in a Shoeshop 15 

either a man or a gentleman ! Perhaps he will have a 
consulting-parlor, in which ladies may lay bare their 
souls (I repudiate the obvious pun) less publicly than 
at present. But for the moment the shoe-specialist is 
certainly in an anomalous position, into which he has 
been pushed by the incredible intimacy of his rich and 
common lady-patronesses. Perhaps there is some 
psychological reason why, in removing the shoe, one 
removes also a shell of reserve (perhaps shell-shocked 
sensibilities have caused it to disintegrate) while a new 
sole-protector is being tested. 

It always establishes a pleasantly cordial relation to 
find one's self hand and glove with a courteous clerk 
on the other side of the counter; but it is almost start- 
ling to find one's self foot and boot — so to speak — 
with an impassioned salesman kneeling at one's feet. 



MILLINERY MADNESS 

A HAT is in man's life a thing apart; *t is woman's 
whole existence — or so at least one would 
■ judge by the tense and concentrated faces re- 
flected in the mirrors of "Miss Hattie'sHat Shop," as 
that specialist's consulting-room is euphemistically 
called. 

The purchase of a hat should never be undertaken 
alone, any more than one should have one's teetJi 
pulled out without a friendly face to confront one 
when "coming out" of gas. And, by the way, what a 
good idea it would be to have a whiff of some anaes- 
thetic applied to the victim who enters a millinery 
establishment to have twenty-five dollars painlessly 
extracted. "Crown work" is sometimes a nervous 
strain to the occupant of the dental chair. It is often 
an equally trying experience to the visitor in the mil- 
linery parlor. 

To be sure, the sight of a hat that seemed designed 
by Fate — or France — to suit one's own particular 
contour and coloring frequently acts like a narcotic, 
and drugs one's conscience into complete subjection 
to the saleslady's wishes. No practitioner in psycho- 
analysis or hypnotic suggestion could more success- 
fully subdue the conscious will and gain a mastery 



Millinery Madness 17 



over the victim than could the plausible Miss Hattie. 

This is what happened when I went to look at hats 
— not to buy them. 

"Oh, no, madam, $29.87 is not at all dear for this 
little toque," Miss Hattie protested to me when I 
faintly murmured at the price. 

"What, you say that you don't wear feathers be- 
cause you belong to the Auburn Society? Why, dear, 
auburn hair like yours is very fashionable this season, 
only we call it henna now instead of red, and black 
feathers look real well with it. What, you don't wear 
bird's feathers? Well now, isn't that a joke! This 
is n't a bird's feather; it 's just made out of whalebone! 
We don't mind killing whales, do we, and yet I sup- 
pose it hurts them to be shot more than it does birds, 
they 're so much less fluffy." 

All this time the hat is being deftly pinned to my 
head. It is only by a supreme effort of will that I can 
tear it off, most of my hair coming down in the struggle ; 
but I am determined not to be hypnotized into sub- 
mission so early; it shows such pitiable weakness. 

" I 'm only looking, not buying, and I don't like that 
hat," I insist; "eitheri/is tooyoungor Jam tooold— in 
fact, I think the shapes are perfectly terrible this year. 
Now look at that—" And I pointed a finger of derision 
at what appeared to be a fruit-basket filled with oranges 
and bananas that was lying on the table beside me. 



1 8 The Notion-Counter 

Suddenly a female more like a Fury than a Shopper 
bore down upon me with a look that froze my blood. 

**You are speaking of my hat, madam, and it is not 
for sale," she announced with bitter scorn. "Perhaps 
you did n't know that yellow is all the rage this year." 
And she flounced away, bearing her agricultural ex- 
hibit with her. {Exit slave, hearing fruit.) 

This experience unnerved me so that I felt a sus- 
ceptibility to hypnotism stealing over me, of which 
Miss Hattie was quick to take advantage by producing 
head coverings of other shapes and shades. 

**How should you like something in the line of Bur- 
gundy?" she suggested, awaking pleasant memories of 
pre-Prohibition days; ''or maize is very fashionable 
this year, as well as pelican. Then there is always 
bisque, or jade, or even wistaria." 

Where were the blues and reds that did not sail 
under false colors? Where were the browns of yester- 
year? I tried to intimate, from my state of partial 
hypnosis, that though I recognized the faces of all the 
colors she was introducing to me, I had forgotten their 
names. 

"Now you just leave it all to m.e," the skillful prac- 
titioner purred soothingly; "I have just the hat for 
you — something refined and at the same time 
snappy." 

She placed upon my fevered brow an austere and 



Millinery Maaness 



19 



uncompromising pyramid, designed on the antedi- 
luvian lines of Mrs. Noah's hat, as remembered in my 
own early Noah's Arkaic days. 

"Say, I 'm just tickled to death with the way you 
look in that hat," my hypnotizer went on, making a 




few passes in front of my face, thereby completing her 
mesmeric success. ** You 're just stunning in it — 
perfectly stunning." 

C'Yes, and stunned, too," I murmured inaudibly.) 

** The way the brim comes down and hides your face 

is just too becoming for words. Now, I 'm going to 

put your old hat in a piece of paper, because of course 



20 The Notion-Counter 

you want to wear the new one, and I don't blame you 
— not one mite." 

Her deft fingers were working as fast as her tongue. 
She knew that I must not "come to" while in her 
parlor. 

"Now here you are, Miss Smithkins. I 'm so glad 
we had just what you wanted and so cheap, too. Good 
morning, — come again, — I remember the charge ad- 
dress." And before I knew it, I was in the street below. 

My first coherent thought was that I had not even 
asked the price of the hat I was wearing ; and I did not 
entirely shake off my stupor till I saw my reflection in 
a shop-window and awoke with a scream. 



THE PASSING OF THE OLD LADY 




T is hard to persuade modern 
enthusiasts that innovations 
are not necessarily improve- 
ments, and that many invent- 
ions of to-day supplant things 
of yesterday which were in- 
herently better worth pre- 
serving. Among other lost 
arts must be reluctantly 
mentioned that of growing old. 
It has been succeeded by something far less lovely, the 
trick of remaining young. The Old Lady seems to have 
passed — or is it possible that she has only temporarily 
withdrawn for a nice little old-fashioned nap in her easy- 
chair, while her modern substitute is chasing a golf-ball 
overthelinks, counting up her gains at the bridge-table, 
or putting a girdle around the earth in an automobile. 
May it be that, when the present-day young woman of 
seventy-five dies from over-athleticism, or from ex- 
posing herself to a draft in a low-necked gown, the dear 
little old lady of a past era will awake, pick up the 
dropped stitches of her knitting, rub her spectacles, 
and resume her interrupted sway? Certainly, it is a 
consummation devoutly to be wished. 



22 The Notion-Counter 

To-day the most flattering tribute we hear paid to 
a woman in the seventies is the exclamation, **How 
young she looks!" And it is pitifully true that she 
looks much younger than she has any right to look. 
Her figure is alw^ays erect, often slender, and generally 
clad according to the latest dictum from the French 
court of fashion, even when the decree goes forth that 
the skirt should reach midway between knee and ankle. 
Her coifTure is much the same as that of her twenty- 
year-old granddaughter and she appears cushioned 
with ** ear-puffs," or billowy with Marcel waves, 
according to her frivolous fancy. A stylish hat par- 
tially extinguishes her "restored" countenance, and 
the young lady of thteescore years and ten is ready to 
compete with two younger generations in their activi- 
ties social, philanthropic, educational, and worldly. 

Of course this false dawn of youth accompanies the 
inevitable swing of the pendulum forward from the 
custom of a past day, when old age was assumed in 
early maturity. Our grandmothers took to caps, 
false teeth, and knitting before they were forty, and 
more than half of their allotted years were spent pre- 
paring for death instead of enjoying life. Common 
sense forbid that we should return to so unnatural a 
cutting-short of youth ! 

A spirit can never be too young for its body, and 
fresh sympathies are not incompatible with ripeness of 



The Passing of the Old Lady 



23 



years. But in the older generation to-day the quiet 
serenity of life's afternoon is conspicuously lacking, the 
inevitable result occurs, and we find young people 
growing up devoid of a sense of respect and of humility. 

We blame our girls and boys for their 
self-confidence, their rudeness, their sense 
of equality with all; but it seems only 
fair to look for the cause, of which their 
complacency is merely the effect. The 
truth is, there is nothing in human inter- 
course to-day to call forth the old- 
fashioned virtue of reverence, formerly 
bred in the bones of the young. Till the . 
genuine old lady, now obsolete, returns 
to dethrone the present pretender, till 
we can see her passing peaceful days in 
the large leisure of quiet home-staying, — 
always ready to lend a sympathetic ear or to share the 
wisdom of an experienced heart, — we shall look in 
vain for respect and modesty in the young. 

The other day a girl of eighteen spoke enthusias- 
tically of her grandmother as "a, perfect corker," and 
the painful point of the incident is that the elderly 
relative was pleased with the compliment. We do not 
wish the pendulum to swing back with the full 
strength of its present impetus; but may not some 
cunning artificer, skilled in the adjustment of 




24 The Notion-Counter 

weights and balances, arise and regulate the clock of 
time and teach the old that in defying age they are 
corrupting youth? 

The old lady must be born again; she cannot be 
made from existing material, for in this age of doubt and 
uncertainties one fact shows clear: the New Woman 
can never grow into the Old Lady. 



VISITED ON THE CHILDREN 

THE spirit moves me to pour my sins into an 
impersonal and public ear — not into one that 
is attached to a private and particular head. 
And in this shameless unloading of my conscience, I 
come as a penitent to the confessional. I do not, it is 
true, ask for absolution, but I hope for the inward 
peace that follows acknowledgment of sin. 

My first mistake was in following Hamlet's advice to 
his mother, when I should have realized that the coun- 
sels of youth to age are frequently better as copy-book 
maxims than as guides for right living. If I had not as- 
sumed a virtue when I had it not, I should not now be 
acknowledging a fault when unfortunately I have it. 
I am an old maid (though that is not my ** fault,'* re- 
ferred to above). I am supposed to be passionately 
devoted to children and, as I have none of my own, 
my friends are very kind about supplying Nature's 
deficiency. As a matter of fact, I have always actively 
disliked children. When I was in the early twenties, 
I had a great many girl friends, and I became almost 
a professional bridesmaid. By a natural sequence of 
events, my role gradually changed to that of god- 
mother — and then my trials began. In looking back, 
I can trace my decline and fall to one act. 



26 The Notion-Counter 

When I was visiting my friend, Kate Brown, I as- 
sumed a sympathy with childhood which I did not 
feel, and, out of friendship for an adoring mother, 
feigned an interest in her mewling and puking off- 
spring. I crushed my desire to pinch the baby and, 
instead, kissed it. I wanted to say, **What a grotesque 
head it has!" but, instead, murmured, **Is n't he the 
image of his father?" Then fearing that insincerity 
was written all over my hypocritical face, I capped 
the climax of untruth by boldly saying, "I do love 
children." 

I have always called falsehoods of that type "ner- 
vous lies," meaning thereby the kind of misstatements 
called forth by some social exigency and not by a native 
desire to deceive. I am aware that no definition can 
palliate my offense. 

From this moment my reputation as a child-wor- 
shiper was established. The news was flashed from 
fireside to fireside that a universal aunt had arisen to 
bless the homes of tired mothers. Thenceforward my 
seasons divided themselves into visits to the house- 
holds — or rather to the nurseries — of my friends, for 
I really may be said to have visited the children. In 
fact, to speak still more truthfully, I was visited on the 
children as irrevocably as if I were the sins of the 
fathers incarnate. 

The poor little victims were passive in suffering; I 



Visited on the Children 11 

was active. If I had only said boldly to my married 
friends in the beginning, " I 'm sorry, but I 'm not very 
fond of children and I have no knack in managing 
them, " all would have been well. I should have stood 
upon a definite, if eccentric, platform. But I catered 
to the vanity of motherhood, and incidentally to my 
own, by seeking parental popularity. 

When I used to tell my friends that I could hardly 
keep my hands off their babies, I fear that I allowed 
them to misinterpret my meaning. The truth is, all 
the salient points about a child irritate me — its 
ubiquitousness, its egotism, its power of usurping at- 
tention, and its horrible frankness. My arms fairly 
ache to shake most little girls, and my palm itches to 
spank most little boys. (I am not sparing myself in 
this confession.) In my fiercer moods, I have even 
been known to suggest wild-animal games, so that I 
could roar and lay violent hands on the spoiled darling 
of its mother, and in the guise of a tiger give it the slap 
it so richly deserved. The first I knew of my supposed 
passion for children (ominous phrase!) was when I 
went to visit my friend Mrs. Smith, and she greeted 
me thus: "O Eliza dear, Kate Brown wrote me how 
fond you are of children, — she said you played with 
her baby for hours at a time to keep him from crying, 
— so I have arranged to let you have my three little 
girls all to yourself for a few days. I have taken the 



28 The Notion-Counter 

opportunity of your being here on a good long visit to 
run up to town for a friend's wedding. Of course the 
children are a little noisy, but you won't mind that, 
and they *re wonderfully friendly. They think of you 
as Aunty already. Come in, Lily, Rose, and Daisy." 

My three fates entered and glared at me. I drew 
back my upper lip in what Mrs. Smith thought was a 
smile, but the children knew was a snarl. Lily's lower 
jaw dropped stupidly, and her m's were all 6's. She 
snuffled incessantly. She was the most unprepossessing 
child I ever saw, except Rose. Rose's voice suggested a 
diet of slate-pencils and pickles. She had straight 
colorless hair, and her face was all bespattered with 
muddy freckles. Daisy had rudimentary teeth with 
fringed edges, like saws, and her eyes were like gimlets. 
When she looked at me she saw my real, but hidden, 
self as clearly as if I had been a transparency hanging 
in a window. She glowered her dislike at me, and I 
tried to do the same to her without being detected by 
her mother. 

"This is your dear Aunty Eliza," Mrs. Smith said 
ingratiatingly. "She has no little girls of her own, and 
you must n't let her feel lonely." (How tired I have 
become of that introduction !) Then she turned to me. 

"You are so different from Fanny!" (mentioning a 
common friend). "Now, when she is here, I keep my 
little girls out of her way, for she tells her friends quite 



Visited on the Children 



29 



honestly that she does n't care for children. Is n't it 
funny and frank of her?" 

Funny and frank indeed — and oh, supremely sensi- 
ble ! How I have envied Fanny, — that wise virgin, — 
who assumed a fault when she had it not, and now has 
the reward of seeing children swept from her path by 
parents too tender to submit the little dears to the eye 
of indifference. For, as a matter of fact, Fanny's feel- 
ing for children is one 
of love and sympathy 
as compared with 
mine. 

It may excite sur- 
prise that the hollow- 
ness of my affection 
has never been de- 
tected. It has always 
been detected — by 
the children, who are the most clear-sighted of the 
human family; but never by their mothers, who, 
having eyes, see not. Children don't like me any 
better than I like them — and thereby they win from 
me a grudging respect. Many a time have I begged 
parents, with tears in my eyes, not to force their 
little ones to stay with me against their wills. The 
only result of this appeal is that I have overheard 
subsequent curtain lectures and surreptitious admon- 




30 The Notion-Counter 

ishings, all on the text: **Poor Aunt Eliza! She has no 
little children of her own, and you must try to love 
her because she loves you so much.'* 

In my younger days I seriously contemplated matri- 
mony as an escape from children (strange paradox!). 
But marrying is like quarreling, in that it takes two to 
do it, and on the whole it seemed simpler to remain 
single. 

It has been a great relief to speak the truth at last. 
I can assure my harshest judges that my punishment 
has fitted my crime, with an exactness which even 
Gilbert's Mikado — that dispenser of perfect justice 
— would approve. The moral of my confession is that 
it is better to seem worse than you are than to be 
worse than you seem ; for the consequences of assumed 
virtue fall fatally upon the delinquent, while the wages 
of an assumed sin are frequently paid by other people. 



"NOW WHO SHALL ARBITRATE?" 

I 

CYNTHIA'S HUSBAND 

IN bringing a difference of opinion between my wife 
and myself to the notice of some desultory reader, 
who may find himself turning over these pages 
in — let us say — a dentist's waiting-room, I feel that 
I am submitting the question to an impartial judge. 
I do not apologize for the personal flavor of my griev- 
ances, for the problem is one of universal interest, and 
touches the antiquated controversy concerning the 
relative values of woman's intuition and man's logic. 

I will call my wife Cynthia, in order that she may 
not recognize herself should her eye chance to fall on 
words so unworthy of her notice. Cynthia and I have, 
each, but a single complaint against the other — a 
pretty good record as married people go, or don't go, 
nowadays. She says I have no penetration, and I in 
turn quote her favorite George Meredith at her, and 
exclaim: ** Destroyed by subtleties these women are." 

She claims to be the unique possessor of a pair of in- 
visible antennae, with which she can feel impressions 
and touch the intangible. 

Now when / meet a person for the first time, I size 



32 The Notion-Counter 

him up by his conversation — which reveals his ideas 
and standards — and by his general bearing — which 
tells whether he is a gentleman or a mucker. Not so 
Cynthia. These obvious methods are not for her. 

In my business I am thrown with all sorts of men, 
mostly good, honest fellows — gentlemen I call them 
— and I often bring one of them home to lunch ; and 
then, when I see Cynthia at dinner, I ask her what she 
thinks of my friend. 

"Didn't you like Robinson?" I ask encouragingly. 
**He*s a bully chap, honest as daylight." 

She merely raises her eyebrows. 

"My dear Algernon, I do not question Mr. Robin- 
son's integrity — but have you ever noticed how his 
teeth are set in his gums? No gentleman ever has 
teeth hke that — they are sometimes worse, but never 
just like that." 

I feel myself to be a coarse clod not to have noticed 
Robinson's teeth ; but taking heart, I next bring home 
my friend Brown — a man of perfect refinement ac- 
cording to my gross standards, and with a set of teeth 
which Cynthia duly disposCiS of as "too good to be 
true." 

"Well, how about Brown?" I tentatively inquire. 
"Don't you think he is a gentlemanly fellow?" 

"Why yes, he is a little like a gentleman," she re- 
plies, "but his hair, Algernon — it grows just the way 



' ' Now Who Shall Arbitrate ?" 33 

the hair of clerks in shoestores grows, right up out of 
his head. It's common." 

*** Aye, madam, it is common,'" I cry with Ham- 
let; and without him, I add: **It is very common in- 
deed for hair to grow right up out of one's head " ; and 
I feel myself to have been very clever, in spite of 
Cynthia's pitying smile. 

Jones is then brought to the bar of 
judgment, and is banished to the limbo 
apparently reserved for my particular 
friends because, forsooth, he answers 
Cynthia's offer of salad with^the words, 
"Thank you, not any." 

Gray committed social suicide by 
saying "Pardon me," instead of *' I beg your pardon," 
apparently an unpardonable offense in itself; and 
White, my trump card, proved himself, if not a knave, 
at least a fool, by referring casually to a man of our 
acquaintance as "a gentleman whom we all know." 

In my masculine stupidity, I asked Cynthia one day 
to call on my partner's wife — a very pretty and cul- 
tivated woman ; at least so I thought till Cynthia laid 
invisible tentacles on her. 

"Why, my poor Algernon," she said after her call, 
"did you never see that Mrs. Black is simply ve- 
neered? She's not solid mahogany at all. Her *cult- 
your, ' as she calls it, keeps peeling off and showing the 




34 The Notion-Counter 

raw material underneath. Why, when her husband 
introduced me to her she shook hands and simply- 
said, *Mrs. Shirley,' and added that she was glad to see 
me in her home." 

As I did not show due horror at this faux pas, Cynthia 
continued: "She had evidently been told that perfect 
ladies make three distinct words of *notatair instead 
•of running them all together as most of us do ; and that 
it is dictionary elegance to speak of one's *nevew.' 
Perhaps you would have been imposed upon by those 
trade-marks of acquired cultivation, but I should have 
liked her much better if she had remained the nice, 
simple little country-girl Nature intended her to be." 

"Well, but her husband, now," I began. "There *s 
no pretense about him." 

" Not a bit ! ' ' my wife rejoined with misleading heart- 
iness. "He wears just the kind of ring that railroad 
conductors always wear, and he says *culch-er' quite 
frankly, and swallows in the middle of the word ; besides, 
no one who tries to cover up his mouth with his hand 
when he laughs could possibly be called pretentious." 

At last, in desperation, I brought home a man whose 
business path sometimes crosses mine. He has not the 
strictest sense of honor, nor the highest regard for 
truth, nor the most refined brand of humor when he is 
with his own sex. In fact, he is a man whom other 
men call a cad; yet he is not without personal attrac- 



"Now Who Shall Arbitrate?'' 35 

tions, chief among which is an enviable sense of ease 
in whatever circle he finds himself — particularly if 
that circle be largely feminine. This specimen I cau- 
tiously submitted to Cynthia's all-seeing eye. 

"There ! " she exclaimed almost before the door had 
slammed after him, ** that is a gentleman ! O Algernon, 
don't you feel the difference? Don't you see that a man 
like that can say things that in some people would be — 
well, almost questionable; yet in him they're all right 
just because he has that indefinable something — '* 

But I could stand it no longer. "He has that de- 
finable something which makes every man who knows 
him distrust him," I began. But I heard her murmur- 
ing, "Unconscious jealousy," and I knew that my 
words would be wasted. 

"The truth is, my dear Cynthia," I said in a fath- 
erly tone, but without caring to meet her eye, "you 
are, like all of your sex, absolutely illogical. A man 
knows a gentleman when he sees him, even if his teeth 
do grow out of his gums, and his hair out of his head. 
Men are better judges of human nature than women." 

"Do you mean to say that you seriously place a 
man's clumsy reasoning above a woman's delicate in- 
tuitions? " Cynthia asked incredulously. 

"I do," I responded. We seemed to be on the edge 
of a bona fide quarrel. 

Now who shall arbitrate ? ' " quoth Cynthia. 



(( ( 



36 The Notion-Counter 

** 'Ten men love what I hate. ' " When she wishes to 
annoy me particularly she quotes poetry at me. 

*' I don't know who will arbitrate," I reply,] very 
literally, "but the fact that you are willing to submit 
the question to arbitration is very encouraging. A 
neutral reader may settle domestic difficulties and 
avert an un-civil war.** 

II 

When the preceding little apology for masculine density 
appeared in print, it called forth the following confession 
from a kindred sufferer who has kindly consented to allow 
her sympathetic message to Cynthia's husband to he 
printed under the heading of 

CLARENCE'S WIFE 

I AM common, hopelessly and irretrievably com- 
mon, in my tastes, habits, and associations, and 
I am married to a Perfectly Refined Man. It is a 
not unusual situation. It is one round which the 
novelist has often woven a pathetic story, touched 
here and there with real tragedy; but in fiction, you 
will notice, the reader is invariably expected to 
sympathize with the soul of shrinking sensitiveness, 
whereas, in this fact of my husband's spiritual mesal- 
liance, it is the wife of common clay for whom your 
prayers are desired. 



''Now Who Shall Arbitrate?'' 37 

First let me hasten to assure expectant ears pricked 
for a tale of domestic infelicity, that Clarence and I are 
very happy together, though it is quite illogical that 
we should be. Clarence is an artist — Oh, dear! there 
I am forgetting again that that word always makes 
him wince! No, he is not an artist, he is a painter — 
though I can never see why he chooses to be called by 
a word that instantly creates the mental image of a 
turpentiney man in dirty white overalls, 
carrying a bucket of paint up a ladder. 
But that idea he considers a proof of my 
crude imagination. Clarence is of such 
refined gold that it would be "wasteful 
and ridiculous excess" to try to gild him 
with adjectives. It is for him to paint 
the lily, and add another hue unto the 
rainbow with his crazy impressionistic ideas of color, 
and it is for me to stand apart from the surrounding 
group of sensitive and soul-searching satellites, and lift 
my vulgar hands to Heaven, thanking God that I am 
not as other men are. For I glory in my shame, even 
as the Pharisee gloried in his superiority. 

Occasionally I go forth with Clarence into The 
World, — that little world of arts and letters which 
takes itself with such portentous seriousness, — but I 
always feel like a cow in a china-shop, and if I move or 
breathe, I am afraid of breaking an ideal or tarnishing 




38 The Notion-Counter 

an illusion. In this little world of half-lights and sub- 
dued tones, the men are all rather small and colorless, 
and wear soft, pointed beards. Their voices are gentle, 
their speech is academic, and they talk about the petty- 
poets, painters, and essayists of their acquaintance as 
if they were reincarnations of Homer, Velasquez, and 
Sainte-Beuve. These innocent creatures speak boldly 
of themselves as "we Bohemians," but they really live 
in Philistia Centre, and not one of them would dare to 
hold an opinion unshared by all. They are intellectual 
communists. 

The women are hardly less feminine than the men. 
They, also, never raise their voices; they seldom raise 
their eyes. They sit at the feet of their high-priestess, 
Miss Lily White, in whose chaste drawing-room they 
delight to cluster; and they strive to imitate her in- 
tonations, to think her higher thoughts, to share her 
greater hopes. And these innocuous ladies fancy that 
on their virginal shoulders have fallen the cloaks of the 
wom.en of the French salons! 

Cynthia's husband will readily see that I am no more 
at home in this milieu than he would be. I always feel 
as Tannhauser must have felt when he was surrounded 
by that Purity League in Elizabeth's castle, and I long 
for the outlet to my feelings which he found in snatch- 
ing up his little stringed instrument and breaking into 
a song so hearty and honest and elemental that his 



'' Now Who Shall Arbitrate ? '' 39 

host and hostess and all their guests rushed from the 
room, leaving him alone with his own amazement. 

Clarence grows restive under the combination of his 
precieux friends and (though I say it who should n't) of 
his also precious wife; and he generally perceives that 
it is for the greatest good of the greatest number that I 
should be withdrawn from these social gatherings. He 
sees my mouth twitching with amusement when I 
ought to look solemn, and my eyes filling with tears of 
pity for the little stillborn joke that a tentative hu- 
morist has shyly produced. I hear soft murmurings of 
pity for Clarence rising to sympathetic lips before I am 
hurried from the room; but once outside the door, I 
clutch my husband's arm and explode w^ith coarse 
laughter ; and he is so much of a gentleman that he joins 
in a little, for fear of hurting my feelings; but he says 
gently, ** I think you are right, Sarah : my world is not 
your world, and it is better not to pretend that it is.'* 
Now, though I am not "refined," I do like people — 
just plain ordinary people, like those that Cynthia 
jeered at because their teeth and their hair grew in the 
common way. It has been my task to found a club, 
which has grown to such a stupendous size that the 
members have bought a house in which their meetings 
are held. The House of Commons is, for obvious rea- 
sons, the name of the club, and the only requirement 
for admission is that the members should know that 



40 The Notion-Counter 

they are common; and that, in itself, is sufficiently un- 
common to limit the membership. We none of us pre- 
tend to be what we are not, or to like what we do not 
appreciate, or to understand things that are beyond 
us; and we all have a splendid time glorying in our 
inferiority. 

I feel that Cynthia's husband and some of his de- 
lightful friends should join this society now that they 
know of its existence, and of its one and only require- 
ment. Perhaps in time Cynthia herself may become 
eligible for membership, if the grossness of her hus- 
band's nature has strength enough to drag her down, 
which, we have been told, invariably happens when 
one is mated to a clown. By the same token my dear 
Clarence's good manners may, in course of time, be so 
corrupted by evil communications as to enable him to 
join us, and then, indeed, there will be joy over the one 
saint that repenteth. 

The only raison d'etre of this little song of myself, 
which I have chirped so persistently, is that I may ex- 
tend an invitation to all those who see themselves as 
others see them to join this Society of Self-Constituted 
Outcasts. After this egotistical confession, it is hardly 
necessary to mention my official position in the club — 
I am the Speaker of the House of Commons. 




MY WIFE'S ADDRESS-BOOK 

I WONDER whether other women's address-books 
are like Cynthia's. Hers defies definition : it can- 
not be indexed or codified, but must be interpreted 
by its amazing creator. To give an idea of the system 
by which it has been compiled I must quote a specific 
instance. 

The other day a lady who was calling on my wife 
inquired whether she could recommend a good laun- 
dress. 

"Oh, certainly," cried the practical Cynthia; "I 
always keep the names and addresses of everyone who 
can possibly be useful to anyone. Algernon," she 
called out to me as I was trying to read the paper in the 
next room, *'just look in my book of Social and Do- 
mestic Emergencies and tell me Nora Mahoney's ad- 
dress. It is something River Street." 



42 The Notion-Counter 

Obediently I took up the little red book with its 
alphabetical pages, and, turning to the M's, ran my 
finger down the list, encountering on the way an alien 
group of P's who had somehow strayed into the wrong 
fold. There was no Mahoney among them. But I 
knew some of my wife's mental processes, and, nothing 
daunted, I turned to the N's, remembering that Cyn- 
thia had once dropped the remark that very few of the 
people she had ever employed seemed to have last 
names. There was no Nora among the Nightwatch- 
men, the Nurses, the Nellys, and the Neds. " Is your 
name M or N?** I murmured as I abandoned both 
initials and turned to L, for Laundress. Again I was 
thwarted, but my hunting-blood was stirred, and I fev- 
erishly, but vainly, sought the needle of a Nora in the 
haystack of Hired Help. 

"Don't you find it, dear? " inquired Cynthia, with 
a note of gentle surprise. " Perhaps you had better let 
me look. You can never seem to learn my system of 
registration." 

When the mystic volume was in her hands, she ap- 
peared to go into a trance, and with eyes closed, mut- 
tered, "Let me see now, would it be under W, for 
Washerwoman? No. Perhaps it might be under G, 
for General Housework — don 't you remember, Alger- 
non, how cleverly Nora was always able to do things 
that we did n't want her to do ? Here are the G's, — 



My Wife's Address-Book 43 

let me see, — Gas-man, Gymnasium-teacher, Mrs. 
Gordon, Glove-cleansing, Miss Grant. Oh, here we 
are! General Housework! Oh, no, that isn't house- 
work, it's General Houston — don't you remember 
that delightful man with the military moustache, we 
met in Virginia? He gave me his card, and I just 
jotted his name down in my address-book. I put him 
among the G*s, because I knew that, though I might 
forget his name, I should never forget that he was a 
General; so here he is, just where he belongs — only, 
where is Nora?" 

She knit her brow for an instant and then unraveled 
it hastily. **Now I remember! How stupid of me to 
forget the workings of my own mind ! I always used 
to think that Nora's name was Agnes, it's so exactly 
the same kind of a name — and I probably put her 
down under A, thinking that is where I should look for 
her. Oh, yes, here she is ! " she called to her patiently 
waiting friend. "She leads off the A's, like Abou ben 
Adhem. Nora Mahoney, 18 Brook Street — just 
what I told you, except that I thought it was River 
Street." 

A few days after this episode I tried to get Cynthia 
really to explain her address-book to me so that I 
might be able to assist others, or myself, in some do- 
mestic, crisis, if she were away or ill ; but she found me 
very literal and thick-witted. 



44 The Notion-Counter 

"You see/* she interpreted, "if a person has a very 
marked characteristic that distinguishes him more 
than his name, of course I put him down under the 
initial of his idiosyncrasy. For instance, there *s that 
deaf old upholsterer that Aunt Eliza told me about, 
who comes to the house and doesn't hear the awful 
noise he makes when he hammers. He is entered under 
D, for Deaf Upholsterer, because the image that is 
flashed into my mind when the chairs need recovering 
is of a deaf man — the fact that his name is Rosenberg 
is of minor importance." 

"But you have such a confusing way of mixing 
names and professions," I objected. "For instance, 
those delightful English people who were so good to us 
in London, Sir James and Lady Taylor, would be flat- 
tered if they could see that right on the heels of Lady 
Taylor follows,* Ladies' Tailor, seventy-five dollars and 
not very good!' Then here under M is Mason, A. P., 
such and such a street. That of course is our old 
friend Miss Anna ; but right under her name is Mason, 
A, with some business address following." 

"Oh, but A is n't an initial in that case," cried Cyn- 
thia, "A is just A, you know, a mason, whose, name I 
don't remember but who was highly recommended by 
the carpenter that time when the bricks fell out of the 
chimney! Really, Algernon, you don't seem to be 
using your mind." 



My Wife's Address-Book 45 

I was still doggedly turning over the pages, and 
hardly listened to her. "Now look here," I trium- 
phantly exclaimed ; "can you give me any logical reason 
why under the letter F I should find Mrs. Charles B. 
Redmond, 32 Pineland Road?" 

"Why, of course I can!" Cynthia informed me 
without an instant's hesitation. "Mrs. Charles Red- 
mond was Fanny Flemming before she was married, 
and people always speak of her by her maiden name, 
on account of the alliteration ; so I put her down under 
the initial that brings her to my mind, but of course 
using the names she is called by. Don't you see?" 

I saw, but there were still unplumbed depths of 
mystery. 

"Can you tell me please," I asked humbly, "why 
there should be flowery beds of E's among the O's, and 
why a little oasis of blossoms beginning with B should 
be blooming among the weedy W's? I 'm sure there 
is some perfectly good feminine reason, but — " 

"Ah, there there is some excuse for you!" Cynthia 
acknowledged; "but surely even you must always as- 
sociate certain letters together for no apparent reason. 
For instance, perhaps you may have forgotten a name, 
but you are certain that it begins with a T. Later, you 
remember the name and find that it doesn't begin 
with a T at all, but with an L. Of course, there is some 
psychological reason why those two letters are asso- 



46 The Notion-Counter 

ciated together in your mind. Now, to me, B and W 
are practically interchangeable, so I have put Mrs. 
Blake and the Burlingtons and old Miss Bosworth in 
with the W's, and the Wilkinsons and the Warners are 
among the B's. It really helps me very much to have 
them like that, but I can see that it would be confus- 
ing to people who had different group associations." 

I closed the little red volume abruptly. "Oh, well, 
if your address-book is simply an Intelligence Test — " 
I began. 

But Cynthia interrupted me. "It is n't an Intelli- 
gence Test, it 's an Intelligence Office," she gently ex- 
plained. 

"Well, it 's no use, I can't understand it," I con- 
fessed. "Your addresses are as safe from me as if they 
were written in Sanscrit instead of ciphers, and were 
locked into a safety-deposit vault. I have no key that 
fits, and I don't know the combination." 

"That 's because you 're a man," my wife pityingly 
explained. "There is n't a woman of my acquaintance 
who does n 't do her address-book-keeping on this gen- 
eral plan ; but the word that opens the combination is 
one that no man will ever understand." 

"Thank Heaven there are still the Telephone Book 
and the Social Register,'* I cried, stung by the tone of 
superiority in Cynthia's voice. 

But her last word was yet to be spoken. " If ever 



My Wife's Address-Book 47 

you want to look up your own name in my address- 
book," she said very sweetly, ''remember the Parable 
of the Deaf Upholsterer, and look under S." 



MY WIFE'S CHECK-BOOK 

CYNTHIA tells me that the difficulties I endure 
in trying to understand her address-book are as 
nothing compared with the struggles she under- 
goes in trying to balance my check-book every month. 
To me the explanation is obvious, but I shall post- 
pone stating it. Cynthia, being very anxious to save 
me trouble, kindly suggested that she should make out 
all the checks for housekeeping expenses, and should 
even go over my check-book herself, to see that it 
agreed with the bank. In fact, there was nothing I 
should have to do but sign my name on the dotted line. 
Even this slight exertion Cynthia offered to spare me, 



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wui^ payt^ ur .,^ ,<^^^z. 



!jl ro 




CAA.*^t£^ 




IPuJ^JlTj^T^ 






Tot h ir cHgL€KAMUwiW 



MTOMWi 






1 



TZTTt 



My Wife's Check-Book 



49 



for she has improved the shining hours she spends sit- 
ting at the telephone, while the operator gives her the 
wrong number, by toying with a pencil and paper till 
she has attained a startling proficiency in reproducing 
my bold signature. When I describe to her the years 
in prison toward which her clever forgery will inevi- 
tably lead, if practised in my check-book, she merely 
tells me not to be absurd, as the president of the bank 
would understand at once that she was not committing 
a crime but only saving me trouble — besides which, 
no one would find out about it, anyway. 

The first of every month there is always just a little 
question of how much trouble I really am saved. My 
wife brings her own check-book and mine into my 
study and " goes over them " while I am trying to read. 



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50 The Notion-Counter 

When Cynthia does sums, she looks as if she were play- 
ing the piano, or manipulating the t3^pewriter. 

"This is theonlycer/amway of doing addition," she 
assures me, ** for, although I am practically certain that 
6 and 5 are 1 1 , and not 13,1 feel that I should not be do- 
ing right if I failed to prove it by ten-finger exercises. 
Let me see," she begins, thinking out loud,** how much 
out were my accounts in April? I always write down 
*A. W. * for 'all wrong' after going over my returned 
checks, just as you put * O. K. ' on yours, and I am start- 
ing May with $79.13 more than the bank gives me." 

"Well, you must find where the mistake is," I begin, 
but she interrupts impatiently. "Oh, no! I have 
learned by experience that the bank always wins, just 
as it does at Monte Carlo, and that saves a lot of 
trouble. So I just subtract $79.13 from $57.00 (which 
is what the bank says I have), and that leaves — Oh, 
goodness ! I Ve got to do it by algebra, because there *s 
a minus quantity!" 

Very firmly I take Cynthia's pen out of her hand and 
go back over her personal expenditures. " Look here 1 " 
I presently exclaim. "Why does the number of this 
check suddenly jump from 29 to 375? " 

"Oh, I don't know," Cynthia rejoins lightly. "But 
the numbers don't matter; they are just for one's own 
convenience, and you were probably talking to me 
while I was numbering the check," 



My Wife's Check-Book 51 

''Well, let's look at the bill you paid with that 
check," I suggest. "We may find one of the keys to 
the mystery." 

But it only made her surplus more unaccountable; 
for she had paid a bill of $3.75 with a check for $29, and 
instead of numbering her check 29 had recorded it as 
No. 375! 

** How dishonest of that Chinese laundry not to have 
told me of the mistake! The Oriental's code, I sup- 
pose, " was Cynthia's only comment, as I continued my 
search for similar slips of her pen. A little later, I dis- 
covered that she had entered the receipt of a small 
dividend on April 15, remembering that that was the 
date it was due, but forgetting that the company had 
suspended payment six months before. But even this 
financial liability was deftly converted into a mental 
asset. 

** Don't you think it was wonderful that I should 
remember the date that dividend was due, and enter 
the right amount without even receiving the check?" 
she inquired, piqued by my failing to express admira- 
tion. And in view of the checks she had received and 
had neglected to enter, I could only agree that it was 
indeed wonderful. 

One of my wife's strange customs is to write little 
letters to herself on the margins of her stubs — all, I 
feel sure, perfectly unintelligible even to the recipient 



52 The Notion-Counter 

of the letters. They run something like this: "Mem. 
Paid J. N. $2.00 too much, and she owed me $7.30 
already. Take notice May 1st " ; and ** Don't forget to 
pay L. B. $4.50 for the rns and t's she got me." Then, 
cramped into almost illegible characters, came the 
announcement, "$75.00 of this is Children's Hospital 
money collected from friends. Not to be spent for my 
personal expenses unless promptly returned." 

Cynthia also has a very confusing system, when 
making out checks to tradesmen in my book, of enter- 
ing their names either by initials, or first names, or 
even a playful nickname. For example, "Little & 
Pettingill," who sell us provisions, are entered as 
"Little Pet." "L M. $87.50" is supposed to tell me at 
once that the iceman's bill was surpassed only by the 
plumber's, which is entered as "Plum. $9L00." Our 
son's teacher, who happens to be an old friend of ours, 
with a Dr. before his name and a great many initials 
after it, receives a sum fit for a king's ransom, under 
the laconic entry of "Billy's bill," while my dentist, 
with whom — in spite of spasmodic familiarity — my 
relations are somewhat strained, is merely referred to 
as "Edgar." "To Edgar, for balancing himself on a 
crowbar on an exposed nerve $175.00," w^as the last 
cryptic reference to this inquisitor, whose pockets we 
fill with gold in exchange for his having performed the 
same office on the family molars. 



My Wife's Check-Book 53 

But the thing that throws out both Cynthia's and 
my accounts more than anything else is the inadvert- 
ent signing of her name on the checks for household 
bills in my check-book. When the day of reckoning 
comes, it is a day of rejoicing for me and of sorrowful 
perplexity for Cynthia, for while my balance looms 
magnificently large, my wife, who has been scrupu- 
lously economical for the last month, receives a cour- 
teous note from the bank informing her that she has 
overdrawn her account, and will she please, at her 
earliest convenience, etc., etc. Even in her consterna- 
tion she remembers to point out to me that the mistake 
must be a very frequent one, inasmuch as a printed 
form was used to convey the sad news. 

But when the explanation of her having signed her 
name to my checks is discovered, Cynthia's triumph of 
innocence knows no bounds. "Was there ever any- 
thing so stupid as that old bank! '* she exclaims. 
"Wouldn't you really think that, after all these 
months, they would know that my checks are pink and 
yours are green, even if the signature is wrong! What 's 
the good of having different-colored checks at all, ex- 
cept to prevent just such things as this happening? 
And what is n't the bank's fault is really yourSj Al- 
gernon," she continues; "because, whenever I come 
mto your study to make out checks, you begin to read 
aloud to me, and then of course I make mistakes. I 



54 The Notion-Counter 

remember perfectly that, while I was signing my name 
to the meat bill, you were reading to me about some 
bill that Borah was hoping to get Harding to sign, and 
I remember thinking that I must n't sign Harding's 
name by mistake, so I signed my own, which was 
really far more disastrous for me." 

Cynthia has a positive genius for proving that her 
errors are never really hers, but always other people's; 
and I generally end by agreeing with her that the bank 
and I should share the blame. "But your methods are 
rather sketchy," I venture to suggest. To which she 
replies imperturbably, *'0h yes, I often call my check- 
book my sketch-book by mistake"; and she regards 
that as an unanswerable last word. 

But to go back to my own first word, the reason that 
Cynthia finds my check-book so difficult to make out is 
a very simple one; she makes it out! 




MY WIFE'S "TELAPHIB" LIST 



OF all modern weapons of offense the telephone 
is the most unfair, because in the conflict that 
follows the call to action — * * Hello ! Is this Sub- 
urban 4428?" — the party attacked has no adequate 
weapon of defense. The receiver transmits into the 
porches of the ear poisoned gas in the form, let us say, 
of an invitation to dine and play bridge — a poison 
more deadly than juice of cursed hebenon because we 
have no antidote at hand to pour into the mouthpiece 
at our end. The only possible retaliation is the sharp 



56 The Notion-Counter 

swift stroke of a deadly lie. That such a lie is justified 
I have, in my saner moments, no doubt; but the mo- 
ment when I am called to the telephone never is a sane 
moment. I falter, I try to prevaricate, I decide to mix 
truth and falsehood — and I am lost ! 

As an aid to the retort courteous and untruthful, 
Cynthia has pinned on the wall beside the telephone 
list, a *'Telaphib List" of alibis and excuses, and in 
moments of great stress we both draw from some of the 
following suggestions : — 

Aunt Sally coming on a visit. 

Nephew just telephoned to ask if he can spend that 
night here — bringing a friend. (This in case we are 
told to bring nephew along.) 

Algernon's class dinner. 

Two people coming to play bridge that evening. 

Old cousin of Algernon's has died suddenly, and we 
think for a week it would be more respectful to accept 
no invitations. 

And then follows : — 

For Special Emergencies Only 

Aunt Sally seriously ill. May be summoned to her 
bedside any minute, so am not making any engage- 
ments ahead. 

Algernon has been having queer dizzy spells. Doc- 
tor forbids. . . . etc., etc. 



My Wife's ' ' Tdaphih "List 57 

Am threatened with nervous breakdown (from too 
much telephoning!). Complete rest is ordered. 

Finally 

Both of us have been exposed to a kind of middle- 
aged mumps that are very contagious. Not right to 
others for us to go about. 

I trust it will be understood that any criticisms in 
which telephobia leads me to indulge are not aimed at 
the legitimate use of this necessary evil, but only at 
those social holdups to which even the most obscure 
dwellers in the remote suburbs of *' Society '* are liable. 

As Cynthia and I sit by our cozy fireside our home 
life is almost wrecked by the undesired presence of this 
invisible third. The Eternal Triangle in our case con- 
sists of ourselves and this wandering voice which, al- 
though proceeding from different throats, always beats 
on our eardrums with the same metallic vibrations. 
The voice invariably selects either the sacred hour 
of dinner for its rude intrusions, or the digestive period 
immediately following the repast, when easy-chairs 
and congenial chat lend to conjugal companionship 
something of the glamour of romance. 

Glowing with a sense of domestic felicity we decide 
that for a week we shall not allow any outside engage- 
ment to disturb the pleasant routine of our evenings 



58 The Notion-Counter 

at home. Then the telephone rings. We both groan. 
My wife says, *'Yougo. I '11 go next time." 

After a tense interval I hear my strained voice say- 
ing to the absent inquisitor, ** Oh, that sounds perfectly 
delightful! I am very sure that / have nothing for 
that night ■ — but perhaps I had better ask Cynthia — 
she keeps an engagement-book, and — and — will you 
just hold the line a moment!" 

My wife's face at this moment is a study. Under 
her solemn fillet I see the scorn. She merely says, 
"Go on! You've done it now. / *w not going to get 
you out of it. You 've told them you have no engage- 
ment, so of course if you have n't, / have n 't ! You are 
theworst\\3.r I ever knew!" (Which I realize is not the 
compliment it sounds.) 

Again I hear my mechanical accents saying, ** Cyn- 
thia tells me she has no engagement. We shall be de- 
lighted to come." Then I hang up the receiver and 
stagger back to my avenging angel, ashamed of my 
own cowardice and in no condition for the marital 
skirmish that is bound to follow this ignominious sur- 
render to the unseen enemy. 

"If you would only let me do it!" says Lady Mac- 
beth. "When you refuse an invitation you must act 
definitely and convincingly. 'T were well ' t were done 
quickly when you are doing long-distance lying. You 
never kill with a good clean lie ; you just wound with a 



My Wife's "Telaphib" List 59 

wretched little trumped-up excuse that only lacerates. 
You use a dagger as if it were a teaspoon and you were 
dipping it into ice cream. Really, Algernon, if you are 
too moral to — " 

The telephone bell puts an end to this painful ar- 
raignment of my virtues. 

"Your turn," I announce laconically. 

"Hello ? " I hear in tones of gentle firmness. Then 
in a moment comes the familiar, "No, it is not. You 
have the wrong number," followed by the irritated 
click of an angrily replaced receiver. 

Another poultice of silence for ten blessed minutes 
heals, not only the blows of sound, but the slight 
mutual irritation caused by my clumsy failure to 
buckle on the armor of untruth. 

I exclaim, "There's the telephone again!" 

"You!" says my wife briefly. 

I go, and I return. 

" You! " I announce triumphantly, and then I listen 
with jaw dropping, to my astonishing wife, who has 
sometimes actually been criticized for over-sincerity. 

Of course I understand perfectly that the conver- 
sation I hear is really for my benefit, much more than 
for the ear six miles away. Cynthia is showing off. She 
is also giving me an object lesson. This is what I hear: 

"Hello! Why, Grace dear, is that you? I have n*t 
seen you for an age!" (A pause! Then — ) "Oh, 



60 The Notion-Counter 

my dear, that sounds too heavenly ! We should 
simply love it, but it *s absolutely out of the question 
because — *' (An evident interruption occurs; then 
Cynthia continues.) **No, it wouldn't do the least 
good to change the night — but it 's awfully sweet of 
you to suggest it! You see I expect Aunt Sally to 
spend the week with me, and you know I just have to 
give up everything while she's here — and then — " 
(Another pause) : '*0h, that's too sweet of you to 
want Algernon alone ! But I was just looking over his 
engagement-book (you know I have to keep his dates 
for him, he 's so stupid about such things) and if you 
can believe it, he has something every night for the 
next week! — What did you say ?" (A pause) **0h«o, 
my dear, he is n't popular at all! I don't mean inter- 
esting things, but just stupid sort of business meet- 
ings, and college reunions and things that he simply 
longs to get out of and can't. Oh, wait a minute — 
he 's just calling out, 'Tell Grace that if I had my way 
I 'd break every engagement in my calendar to dine 
with her and Ned! ' How 's that for a compliment ?" 
(Pause) ** No, he does n't ever flatter, — really, — that 's 
the way he feels about you both, but I must n't keep 
you any longer, my dear, do please ask us again some- 
time, won't you ? After Aunt Sally has gone, and 
when Algernon is through r^-uniting. Good-hye:. So 
disappointed!" 



My Wife's "Telaphib" List 61 

Cynthia returns to her seat and her sewing — a flush 
of victory on her brow. 

" Is Aunt Sally really coming ? " I ask briefly. 

** She 's awfully subject to bronchitis at this season," 
Cynthia replies evasively. " One can never be sure of 
an old person. " 

Then, very gravely, I take out my engagement-book 
to confront her with the blank pages, but after glanc- 
ing at the dates of the coming week I acknowledge my- 
self checkmated. I am aghast at discovering the fol- 
lowing entries : — 

Monday: Class dinner. 
Tuesday: Reunion of class. 
Wednesday : College Endowment Fund dinner. 
Thursday: Class dinner . . . and so on for the next 
ten days. 

** Cynthia," I remark severely, **if you were a man 
I should say that your code is not that of a gentleman." 

''Algernon," she replies sweetly, "if you were a 
woman I should say that you were inconsistent. We 
have agreed that it is right to Tel and Tel " (Cynthia's 
code for Telephone and Tell-a-lie) "but you don't dare 
to live up to your convictions. Gracious! There's 
that old bell again!" 

I take down the receiver and listen to the voice 
of the sluggard, too lazy to write her invitations: — 



62 The Notion-Counter 

**This is Mary Borus speaking. We hope that you 
and your wife will run in to-morrow evening after the 
Mental Hygiene lecture, and have a Welsh rarebit." 

A sudden inspiration seizes me, and by way of answer 
I hear myself uttering those five words that so often 
beat as one, upon the ear of the "wrong number": 

" Willyoupleaseexcuseus ? " 

I hang up the receiver with conscious pride and am 
rewarded by Cynthia's smile of commendation. 
"How rude you were, dear!" she says admiringly. "At 
last you are really acquiring telephone technique!" 





^mm$9^MM 



WOMAN is undoubtedly one of those good 
things of which we cannot have too much; 
but women are anomalous creatures, of 
whom we may certainly have too many. 

For it is one of the mysteries of life that, whereas an 
individual woman may combine the fascinations of 

Note: — "Nobody" wishes to repudiate "Somebody's" impli- 
cation that "Woman" is necessarily a mother, and that "Women" 
are by all outward hall-marks spinsters. The hand that casts the 
ballot or wields the gavel is, in " Nobody's" opinion, as womanly 
an appendage as the hand that rocks the cradle. 



64 The Notion-Counter 

Cleopatra with the wisdom of Minerva, nevertheless, 
when she has been sufficiently multiplied, her counter- 
parts form an arid assembly of unrelated units from 
which all charm and dignity have fled — a heteroge- 
neous mass of individuals without form and void. Any- 
one who has attended meetings composed exclusively 
of either sex must have felt the different impressions 
produced by a body of men, whose personalities all 
blend into a harmonious whole, and a collection of 
women — isolated spots of yellow, green, and blue, 
which, like the little, many-colored dabs in an impres- 
sionistic painting, are supposed to become coherent 
when viewed in the right perspective. 

Undoubtedly the superficial and external attributes 
of dress and personality are responsible for a share of 
the half-contemptuous amusement with which as- 
semblies of women are regarded by their unorganized 
sisters. When we find gowns of varied hue, hats of 
diverse shapes, garments of every cut, coats of many 
colors, to say nothing of heads swollen with acute at- 
tacks of pompadour, or meek with the lowliness of 
English buns that never rise, we cannot hope for much 
dignity, while the voices alone, in all degrees of guttural 
and nasal, would preclude any impression of harmony. 

A hall, full of black-coated brethren, all bareheaded 
and short-haired, suggests an outward likeness which 
may have no internal equivalent, yet which affects the 



Woman versus Women 65 

onlooker with a sense of oneness. Men look more or 
less like birds of a feather when flocking together. The 
individual is lost in the type; it is not Each, but All, 
that impresses us. 

Not so with women. The attention of the outsider 
is perhaps distracted by a strong-minded reformer 
with spectacles on nose and pouch on side, who, like 
Jenny Wren, always wears a plain brown gown and 
never dresses too fine ; while by her side sits the stud- 
iedly frivolous spinster, decorated with ** waves" and 
furbelows, and redolent of patchouli and peppermint. 
Another specimen intrudes itself upon the wandering 
attention and invites admiration of its alert intelli- 
gence, magnified by horn-rimmed spectacles. When 
one's eye and mind are constantly distracted by the 
individual, how can one be impressed by the whole? 

There are women who are as eloquent, as logical, as 
convincing in argument and speech as their husbands 
and brothers across the way; but surround them by 
their parti-colored female followers, and their words 
become as sounding brass and tinkling cymbals. The 
terrible truth is that women — en masse — become lu- 
dicrous in proportion to their numbers and the earnest- 
ness of their purpose ; whereas the defects of man are 
forgotten in the merits of mere men. 

For the rights of Woman I have always been a firm 
advocate; when their hard-won fight for the suffrage 



66 The Notion-Counter 

was successful, I threw up my hat with the rest; and 
loyally I claim that a fine woman is a nobler work of 
God than an honest man. But for the rights of Women 
I have no sympathy, since hearing their wrongs voiced 
by women themselves. Till women are willing to sac- 
rifice the individuality wherein lies their true power, 
and are ready to don a uniform undictated by fickle 
Fashion, till they are ready to yield themselves to the 
perfect whole, let them not expect their public meet- 
ings to have any greater results than the laughter and 
applause of the unseen audiences from whom they de- 
mand respectful and silent attention. But far be it 
from me to wish to hasten the day when woman will be 
shorn of her strength by the cutting of her hair and the 
suppression of her individual taste. Bobbed hair, 
when framing a middle-aged face, is already being 
laughed out of fashion. It is the unexpectedness, the 
variety of the type that gives woman her personal 
power. It is only when she becomes one of an organ- 
ized body of women that she suggests a futile hen in a 
roosterless barnyard, where female fowls cackle and 
complain, instead of realizing her ideal self — the good, 
the true, the beautiful — which places her a little 
lower than the angels, but a little higher than man! 



MRS. O'TOOLE AND VENUS 

MANY words, both wise and foolish, are written 
and spoken nowadays concerning the moral 
regeneration which results from artistic en- 
vironment. We hear that in certain tenements the 
dear old traditional chromos of ecstatic saints, gor- 
geous in coats of many colors, have been supplanted by 
shadowy reproductions of Mona Lisa's disconcerting 
smile; that the crude theatrical poster has been ruth- 
lessly torn down by the helpful hand of the Social 
Uplifter, and in its place has been substituted the 
modern equivalent of a God-Bless-Our-Home motto. 
I refer to the inevitable little group of Mr. Sargent's 
prophets, who some years ago strayed beyond the 
walls of the Boston Public Library, and in small 
detachments have ever since been invading the 
American home, be it ever so humble. 

Even children have not been able to escape the in- 
fluence of *'the uplift of beauty," and if sentimental 
social workers are not careful they will transform 
natural little barbarians into un-natural and hypo- 
critical little pedants. 

The other day I stopped for a moment to look in at a 
"Centre of Friendliness" where an overzealous and 
undertrained young volunteer worker was spreading 



68 The Notion-Counter 

sunshine — instead of bread and butter — for a group 
of boys and girls. I felt tempted to report Miss Noitall 
to the Society for the Control of Unnecessary Brutal- 
ity to Children when I grasped her method of aesthetic 
enlightenment. She had placed an exquisite Ophelia 
rose in a clear white vase against a bluey-green back- 
ground and was dilating to the children on how much 
more satisfactory it was to look at flowers than to touch 
them. To feel the beauty of a rose with one's soul 
instead of one's fingers was, she assured them, to 
possess the rose. 

A murmur of protest, like the subdued roar of a 
stage-mob, made itself heard among the small rebel- 
lious populace, and I saw little damp fists clench, not 
in anger, but in retrospective possession of entrancing 
tight little bunches of half-faded flowers, red, purple, 
and pink, all jammed together in one delightful relic 
of an hour in a kind lady's garden where they had been 
told that pickings could be keepings. 

The children looked at the exquisite, lonely rose with 
lacklustre eyes, and repeated '* y^s'm " to whatever the 
lecturer on aesthetics said, experience having taught 
them that acquiescence was the surest means of short- 
ening the discourse. But it was easy to see that their 
feeling for the untouchable rose was of a Peter Bell- 
like quality. 

Why must we try to teach people the kind of knowl- 



Mrs, O'TooIe and Venus 69 

edge to which they are unsuited ? For my own part, 
I think there are few more painful spectacles than the 
sight of a trained seal ringing a dinner-bell or pushing 
a perambulator. I was reminded of just such an at- 
tempted triumph of Art over Nature the other day when 
I visited the cast-room in a large Museum. A self- 
respecting and self-supporting washerwoman, accom- 
panied by a lady friend,, was evidently learning from a 
"friendly visitor" how to see beauty in the Venus of 
Milo. I had followed the little group from room to 
room, rather in the manner of a detective escaping 
detection by complete absorption in various art treas- 
ures,* so that I was able to derive both enlightenment 
and amusement from the naive Celtic comments which 
I overheard. Poor Mrs. O'Toole was utterly iDewil- 
dered by Venus — but she was evidently trying to link 
her up with some war relics she had just been shown in 
another section of the Museum. She had heard hor- 
rible tales from her son who had been overseas — tales 
he had been told by a man in his company who had 
heard an English Tommy say that a French soldier 
had actually seen mutilated Belgian women and chil- 
dren. Perhaps Venus was a Belgian. At any rate, to 
one of Mrs. O'Toole's profession the thought of earning 
one's living with the handicap of handlessness touched 
a soft spot in her warm Irish heart, and blinded her 
to any possible beauty in so sad a spectacle. 



70 



The Notion-Counter 




"Och, the poor creature!" she murmured, "and 
her with no hands to do a day 's washing, and no arms 
to hold a shawl around her bare shoulders! Them 
Germans was surely crool." 

The friendly visitor hastened to correct Mrs. 
O 'Toole's misconception by leading her over to The 
Dying Gaul and reciting a little Byron for her edifi- 
cation. I then followed the strange little group into 
the Japanese section of the Museum, that Mrs. O'Toole 
might feast her eyes on some perfect example of Ori- 
ental form and color. And all to what end ? We may 



Mrs. O'Toole and Venus 71 

marvel at the patience and imagination of the seal's 
trainer, and at the patience and lack of imagination of 
the washerwoman's uplifter, but are we anything but 
shocked at the result ? 

There are plenty of things we can learn from the 
seal ; there are still more things that we can learn from 
the scrubwoman — lessons in endurance, true neigh- 
borliness, and kind-heartedness. There are also, of 
course, innumerable things she can learn from us, 
things which will be more helpful and more pleasurable 
to her than a mere bowing acquaintance with Apollo 
or Hercules. Firing off pistols will not be a valuable 
accomplishment to a seal when he returns to his native 
element. 

I suppose these heretical doctrines will be set down 
as the vaporings of a reactionary, or, perhaps, thesmug 
sentiments of a pharisaical citizen who is trying to dis- 
courage the Privileged from uplifting the Downtrod- 
den. It is certainly not my intention to try to curb 
the progressive spirit of this age of altruism. I merely 
wish — in all humility — to utter a word of protest 
against sentimental and ignorant idealists, who are 
teaching insincerity and affectation to the few really 
sincere and ingenuous souls left unpolluted by mod- 
ern over-civilization. 

I do not mean to approve of Mrs. Stetson's con- 
servative butterfly, who so much preferred to remain 



11 The Notion-Counter 

a worm that he madly tried to climb back into his 
chrysalis ; bu 1 1 think that when we introduce the Venus 
of Milo to Mrs. O 'Toole, we are tying artificial wings to 
a caterpillar and expecting him to float about like a 
butterfly. His efforts to soar are pitiful. If the wings 
develop from the inside he will fly naturally ; and when 
that moment comes, I promise to be behind no one in 
admiring his spontaneous flight. But most of us be- 
long to that large family of worms who will never turn 
into butterflies ; and if we can learn to crawl a little 
less lumberingly ourselves, we shall be setting a better 
example to our still slower friends than if we try to 
teach them to use flying-machines. 

Will no one, then, take my worm*s-eye view of life 
and join my Creepers' Crusade? Breathes there a 
man with soul so dead that he will come with me to the 
converted tenement of an unconverted washerwoman, 
reinstate the Monarch of the Glen (who abdicated 
in favor of a gray photograph of a gray gull against 
gray clouds), request Hoseaand Jeremiah to move on, 
and, in spite of their lamentations, enthrone a lurid 
caricature from a Sunday Supplement ? 

Nothing is beautiful unless it is sincere and appro- 
priate. One's surroundings should express one's indi- 
viduality and one's personal predilections. The mod- 
ern drawing-room which represents merely the taste 
of the architect and interior decorator is faultily fault- 



Mrs. 0' Toole and Venus 73 

less and splendidly null, unless there is in it some per- 
sonal touch or suggestion of those who are to live within 
its walls. This human note is often out of harmony 
with the general scheme. Sometimes a clumsy black- 
walnut desk or a stuffy old armchair is the inartistic 
medium through which the tender grace of a day that 
is dead alone survives. Never mind — it is that touch 
of nature which gives life to the dead perfection of the 
decorator's art ; it is that discordant note for which the 
inward ear listens. 

Just so, to me at least, is the effect produced by a 
tenement-house room in which the bare necessities of 
life can be brightened by only the scantiest aesthetic 
touches, and in which these touches have been sup- 
plied by an alien hand. More beautiful — because 
more expressive of the genuine taste of its possessors — 
is the laboriously-wrought antimacassar of beads and 
plush, or the chromo representing the fruits of Cali- 
fornia, than the Lippo Lippi madonna or the chaste 
Japanese vase which the Uplifter would fain substitute 
for them. Preciosity is bad enough in drawing-rooms; 
it is intolerable in tenements. When we try to force 
upon uneducated tastes an appreciation of, let us say, 
Burne-Jones or Rodin, we are prying open a bud, de- 
stroying the embryonic flower inside, and tying a 
tissue-paper rose on the stem. Instead of trying to 
teach the less privileged classes (horrible phrase!) to 



74 The Notion-Counter 

pretend to like what they don't like, let us try to learn 
from them to have the courage of our own tastes — 
be they good or bad. 

Mrs. O 'Toole is probably a first-class laundress — 
as an art critic she is less valuable. If she needs edu- 
cating, let us teach her something useful. If she wants 
to have a good time, let us spare her a close-up of the 
Belgian Venus and take her to see Mary Pickford in 
"Suds"! 




MY ARCHITECTURAL FRIENDS 



I WONDER if to others, as to me, houses seem to 
have names expressive of their characters — 
names universally of the feminine gender. I do 
not refer to the absurd and high-sounding abortions of 
misspelling given them in baptism by their parents or 
guardians — **Mayplehurst," "Wyndwold," "Hyl- 
holm." No, I mean good honest Christian names, 
suggested by the personality of the houses themselves, 
like ''Margaret and Mary, Kate and Caroline,'* to 
quote the May Queen's list of defeated candidates for 
the regency to which she herself was chosen. To an 
old man who has been robbed of human companion- 



76 The Notion-Counter 

ship by the relentless years, these friends of wood and 
stone are among time's compensating gifts. 

I have lived — for more years than the Psalmist 
would allow me to consider free from labor and sorrow 
— in a country town where each dwelling is to me a 
distinct personality. Of course, houses express the in- 
dividuality of their occupants, and are saturated with 
associations which, to the octogenarian, are so much 
cud for the toothless jaws of memory to chew. That 
goes without saying; but what / cannot go without 
saying is that to me each house has a name and a char- 
acter of its own, not of its owner. 

Across my street is a matronly-looking colonial 
mansion, with yellowing complexion and a pleasant 
look of experience, whose name I am sure is Deborah. 
Her broad brow beams benignly upon me, and the 
smile of her hospitable front door, cordial and affec- 
tionate, recognizes that we are contemporaries. Close 
by is a little cottage whose eyebrows are always 
raised in an expression of surprise, and whose hair 
seems tightly pulled back on her roof. Neat, trig, and 
compact, this little house is always Ellen to me; 
for I once knew an Ellen — sixty years ago — 
whose personality was the same. 

All the way down the street to the post office, these 
friends of mine stand, cordial, smiling, intimate. That 
fat, comfortable house, who seems to recline rather 



My Architectural Friends 77 

than to sit up like her neighbors, is called Lizzie, as 
any one with an ounce of imagination can see at a 
glance. Poor Lizzie's eyes are half shut under their 
swollen lids, and her rather cumbersome bulk emanates 
indolence. I know she is rheumatic from lying in that 
damp hollow so long, and the thought gives me a 
sympathetic twinge. 

Of course, there are some houses for whom I have 
not the same affection as for these intimates. For in- 
stance, there is a prudish little gray house on the 
corner, whose nose is in the air, and who is too prim to 
smile at any man, even when he is almost a right angle 
in shape and leans upon a cane. She is thin, angular, 
and old-maidish, and I know her name is Sophia, and 
that is all I care to know about her. 

Next door is a flirtatious little Queen Anne cottage, 
peeking coquettishly out from a tangle of flowers, her 
hair hanging picturesquely over her eyes in curls and 
tendrils. Dear little Flossy! I can't look at her be- 
guiling personality without regretting that her unsym- 
metrical prettiness has been superseded by a more 
classic type of beauty. Yet who can look at her digni- 
fied neighbor, Helen, and regret anything! Helen, the 
pride of her architect, and of her town, pure in line, 
stately in bearing, perfect in beauty. To her I take off 
my hat, while to Lizzie, Ellen, and Flossy I informally 
nod and smile. 



78 The Notion-Counter 

Of course, in architectural circles, as in others, there 
is the vulgar parvenue who tries to get into good so- 
ciety by imitating her neighbors. Close beside Helen, 
peeking at her through an ornate fence, is one of these 
pretentious little upstarts. She is shockingly over- 
dressed, blatantly pinchbeck, and shows hybrid in- 
heritances. Her hair is done a la francaise (French 
roof), she has the real English complexion (redbrick), 
and she has decked herself with inappropriate Floren- 
tine furbelows and Roman mosaics (Italian garden and 
pergola). Her name, I need hardly say, is Gladys. 

Of course I understand that one of the many pleas- 
ures which dwellers in cities must resign is this sense of 
intimacy with inanimate things. Who ever heard of 
houses in blocks having names or personalities — 
with their red faces all alike, and never so much as a 
profile among them ! There is no variation of type. I 
feel like saying to them what Humpty Dumpty said to 
Alice when he felt the hopelessness of ever recognizing 
her again. "Your face is the same as everybody has. 
. . . Now if you had the two eyes on the same side of 
the nose, for instance, or the mouth at the top — that 
would be some help." 

As one grows callous and cold with age, one wel- 
comes anything that brings back the glow of life to 
organs almost obsolete. So, when I leave the monoton- 
ous characterless city, after my annual visit to my 



My Architectural Friends 79 

grandson, and get back to my dear old-fashioned town 
and look in the friendly faces of Deborah, Lizzie, Ellen, 
et al.f I feel the cockles of my heart warming with 
love, and the muscles of my throat tightening with 
emotion. And if I can keep my "cockles and mussels 
alive, all alive," like those in the old song, till my shell 
of mortality falls from me, it will be owing to the silent 
influence of my architectural friends. 




PARABLES IN MOTORS 



THE other day I was escorting an elderly phi- 
lanthropist across a crowded street. She is a 
lady of vigorous opinions 'and free speech, gems 
of which I herewith string together without exhibiting 
the thread of my own colorless rejoinders. 

"Did you ever see anything so outrageous as these 
motors!" she exclaimed in righteous wrath, as we just 
escaped being crushed between a taxicab and a huge 
touring car. "Automobiles are such insolent adver- 
tisements of wealth ! I don't see how their owners can 
endure being either hated or envied by that portion of 



Parables in Motors 81 

the world that has not yet lost the use of its legs. For 
every human being automobiles kill, they create a so- 
cialist. They are vulgar, hideous, death-dealing ma- 
chines, put in the ignorant hands of the fools who own 
them and the knaves who run them. Now look at those 
little children trying to cross the street — and that 
poor old lady! I declare, the chauffeur is simply chas- 
ing her for his own cruel sport — hunting her as he 
would a fox, and blowing his horn." Then, — in italics, 
— "I can't see how a self-respecting person with any love 
or regard for humanity can own a motor.'' 

The next time I saw my vindictive friend she was 
tucked up in borrowed plumage, and comfortably in- 
stalled in the limousine of an acquaintance, who had 
kindly placed her car at our disposal to visit some dis- 
tant charitable institution of which we were both di- 
rectors; and, as we bowled gayly along, she seemed to 
have forgotten entirely our last meeting and conver- 
sation. 

'*I must say the motion of these cars is delightful," 
she said, sinking back among the cushions with an air 
of perfect ease and familiarity. **How safe we seem! 
I really think it would do no harm if the chauffeur 
should go a little faster. Do look at those stupid 
women rushing across the street like frightened hens ! 
I should think they 'd see that we 're not going to run 
into them. Now look at those children ! It 's outrageous 



82 The Notion-Counter 

that they should make it so hard for the chauffeur 
to avoid running over them. If we killed one of those 
foolhardy little idiots, people would blame us, and it 
would n't be our fault at all — it would be simply a 
case of suicide." 

I acquiesced in her views, as I had done once before. 

** After all, there is a great deal to be said for these 
motors," she continued judicially. " They are not only 
perfectly delightful to ride in, but they make all kinds 
of difficult things easy; and really most of the people 
who own them are apt to be very considerate to those 
who are less fortunate. There are certainly two sides 
to automobiling." 

There you have the chief function of the motor. 
There is nothing else I can think of which changes one's 
point of view so completely and so suddenly. A logical 
mind must therefore ask itself, ** If, by simply stepping 
into an automobile, I can see motors and motoring 
from an entirely different point of view, cannot I be- 
lieve that the same metamorphosis would take place if 
I could jump into a mental motor, and speed rapidly 
from one side of a question to another ? " 

Surely the parable of the motor should make us be- 
lieve in the existence of a missing link in the chain of 
mutual understanding which ought to bind all hun can- 
ity together. And if that lost link cannot be found, 
may we not ourselves manufacture one ? (As a moral- 



Parables in Motors 83 

monger, it is with difficulty that I here refrain from al- 
luding to the ** flaming forge of life " as an appropriate 
workshop for the manufacture of missing links.) It is, 
at least, in harmony with my parable to suggest that 
every good chauffeur should be a skilled mechanic as 
well as a driver. 

By way of an irrelevant postscript, I will mention 
that, when I stepped in yesterday for a cup of tea with 
the lady who ** could not see how any self-respecting 
person could own a motor," I found her snowed under 
a pile of circulars stating the rival claims of various 
automobiles. 

"Should you advise me to get a runabout, or a tour- 
ing car?" she asked, with perfect seriousness. 

But I could not choose between them; for what I 
consider the most important part of motors — the 
parable — was equally sound in each. 



REEL-LIFE 

WE hear a great deal nowadays about censoring 
moving pictures till they more closely re- 
semble life. A far more piquant and popular 
act of legislation would be the censoring of life till it 
more closely approximates the fascinating unreality of 
the movie. Poets have always enjoyed comparing the 
world to the stage, but perhaps old Omar was the first 
to don the prophet's garb, in addition to his crown of 
laurel and grapevine, and foretell the movie when he 
exclaimed : — 

We are no other than a moving row 

Of Magic Shadow-shapes that come and go 

Round with the Sun-illumin'd Lantern held 
In Midnight by the Master of the Show. 

If Shakespeare were to be edited in such a way as to 
make him thoroughly intelligible to the youth of the 
present day, Jaques would have to exclaim: — 

All the world 's a screen 
And all the men and women movie-players. 

Verily the histrionic sense has helped many of us to 
surmount situations which would have seemed uncon- 



Reel-Life 85 



querable save for the dramatic instinct, and the sense 
of playing a role has helped us to attain moments of 
real heroism. The more poignant a situation is, the 
more unreal it seems. 

Whether the dramatic stimulus of "the film*' will 
have the same beneficial effect on conduct is doubtful, 
just because the movie is farther removed from life; 
but if some of the miracles of mechanical art, as ex- 
emplified in moving pictures, could be applied to our 
daily life, the performance would go off much less 
clumsily. It is not the checkered career of the movie 
hero or heroine that seems desirable, so much as the 
way in which Art has improved upon Nature, par- 
ticularly in its method of dealing with crises. If our 
slogan, instead of "Back to Nature!" were "Forward 
to Artifice! " we should no longer have our awkward 
exits and our ill-timed entrances. We could be flashed 
in medias res, full-armed and equipped for the needs 
of the moment ; and there would never have to be the 
anticlimax of getting ourselves out of the room after 
a magnificent deed, or an eloquent speech. A flash, 
quicker than the wink of an eye, and we should exist 
no more. 

It is easy to understand the almost universal appeal 
of the movie — it brings adventure, romance, hair- 
breadth escape, pathos, humor, into the dullest lives, 
for so small a price. Of course, it is not much like life; 



86 The Notion-Counter 

but how wonderful it would be if life could be like the 
movie — not so much in its events, which are perhaps a 
little lurid for some of us, but in its facile eliminations ! 
How reassuring it would be to know that, just as you 
were facing almost certain death, through the impact, 
let us say, of an express train with your motor-car, 
there would be just a flash of suspended activity, and 
the crash would never come! You would experience 
all the excitement of its having actually occurred ; for 
in the fraction of a second you would find yourself 
sitting uninjured on a pile of debris, your companion 
sitting beside you in the wilderness, with his Arrow 
collar unwrinkled, and the express train a wreck be- 
hind. What a saving of nervous wear and tear would 
be given to an apprehensive generation by the cer- 
tainty that the maximum of human suffering would 
be represented simply by a moment of arrested action ! 
And even in the more familiar domestic crisis, life 
would become a far more coherent and intelligible 
thing, if it could be reduced to a given number of reels. 
When the cook gives warning because she prefers a 
season at Newport to the summer months at Lenox, 
there would be a blessed moment of oblivion and then 
— presto !^ — we should find ourselves welcoming a 
cheerful successor, who feels that a ' summer in the 
Berkshires would be more restful than life at "the 
beach." If an instantaneous eraser could wipe away 



Reel-Life 



87 





'?. 



A TR, A G £ D Y • 

IM EIGHT REELS. 



all trivial fond records, as well as life's acuter agonies,, 
we should have the extraordinary experience of enjoy- 
ing the perfectly secure Present, while looking forward 
to intense adventure and backward upon phenomenal 
escapes. To be sure, we should be living on the system 
of Alice's jam, except that, under modern accelerations 
of speed, "to-morrow" would be translated into '*a 
second hence," and "yesterday" into a "second ago." 
Could Shakespeare's banished Duke be recalled 
from the Forest of Arden and transplanted in New 
York, I am sure that his passion for preaching would 
find Morals in Movies and Reality in Reels, as surely 
as Sermons in Stones. He would, with wise saws and 
modern instances, explain how we ought to act always 



88 The Notion-Counter 

as if we were in a ** photo-play," cultivating the sub- 
lime trust of the hero of the screen, who knows that, in 
spite of hungry lions and airship accidents, of blood- 
thirsty criminals and soul-hungry sirens, he will 
emerge triumphant in the tenth reel, to the tune of 
"See the Conquering Hero Comes!" 

And this suggests what a help to our sordid lives 
might be supplied by that great asset of the moving 
picture, an accompanying organ or a quavering violin, 
to render the selection most appropriate to our im- 
mediate needs! We have seen in the movie how the 
hand raised to stab a rich, but otherwise blameless 
uncle, was stayed by the arresting power of the would- 
be assassin's favorite hymn. Surely this gives us a 
valuable suggestion. Would friends ever fall out, if, 
when an approaching quarrel darkened the horizon, 
they should hear a violin obbligato inquiring whether 
auld acquaintance should be forgot? If a thoughtless, 
but by no means criminally-inclined child had mislaid 
a piece of string for which we were angrily searching, 
would not our hearts be softened by the appropriate 
strains of "The Lost Chord" ? 

In these suggestions there are hints that a moving 
picture can be made moving indeed by the intelligent 
application of the Vox Humana stop at the right mo- 
ment. Would that its eloquent tremolo might follow 
us from the screen to the domestic hearth ! Perhaps, by 



Reel-Life 89 



borrowing some of the artifice of the movie, we can 
make real life more like reel-life, and truth seem 
stranger than fiction. If this be pragmatism, yet 
there 's method in 't ! 




POTS AND KETTLES 



THE world is so full of a number of things that it 
is a difficult task to sort out from the cosmic 
potpourri those rare nuggets which yield un- 
alloyed pleasure to the rummager. 

To those in whose veins the sluggish flow of thick 
red blood is enlivened by a few drops of cynicism (not 
sufficient to poison, but enough to stimulate), I think 
there is no more acute joy than that which comes from 
finding unsuspected weak spots in the armor of their 
friends. Of course, we all like to know that our ene- 



Pots and Kettles 91 

mies are vulnerable ; but it is only the cynical elect who 
can appreciate with fine Epicurean fastidiousness the 
glorious revelation that their friends are human, after 
all. And it is not only the weaknesses of those near 
and dear to us, it is their misfortunes and annoyances 
which give a thrill of illicit joy to those honest contor- 
tionists who can look into their own hearts. I once 
heard a young mother say that there was only one 
thing which gave her greater pleasure than hearing 
that the children of her friends were sick, and that was 
to hear that they were bad. No one but a " Potterite " 
(to borrow the excellent noun with which Rose Ma- 
caulay has enriched us) would think of condemning 
this young woman for being malicious or unkind. 
Misery is not the only human quality that loves com- 
pany. Some of her distant relatives — Anxiety, Dis- 
couragement, Annoyance — are equally sociable. 

Certain manifestations of what I call "human na- 
ture" are the jewels I like best to pick out from the 
jumble of human characteristics which a prodigal Prov- 
idence has cast as rubbish to the void ; and of these 
precious stones I make a speciality of collecting 
those which seem to me of purest ray, namely, gems of 
Self-deception. To be a human being is to be self-de- 
ceived ; and watching the manifestations of this uni- 
versal attribute gives a very rare quality of enjoyment 
to the exceptional soul who is the only enameled uten- 



92 The Notion-Counter 

sil in a world of Pots and Kettles, all busily engaged in 
calling each other black — that one white utensil 
being always one's self. 

Why do the Pot and the Kettle delight in accusing 
each other of having at least a strain of colored blood, 
when they might unite their jibes at the expense of the 
Saucepan, for being what the Society Column in the 
Kitchen Companion would caXX "charming in baby-blue 
agate? " Why do they not sneer cynically at the ques- 
tionable purity of a white-enameled Frying-pan? 
Simply because it is always our own most conspicuous 
fault to which we are most keenly alive when it is re- 
produced in a neighbor, though sublimely unconscious 
of its existence in ourselves. 

I know of nothing more satisfying than to hear Mrs. 
Parvenue criticize Mrs. Nouveau-Riche for being 
"just a thought too cautious in her social relations." 

" I think it is a little mite pretentious to use a hyphen 
in one's name," says Mrs. P., moistening her lips with 
a tentative tongue; "and if there is one thing that I 
can't stand, it is pretense. I am afraid that Mrs. 
Nouveau-Riche is a little bit of a Climber; and I for 
one don't care to be made use of as a rung in her 
social ladder." 

This subtle figure of speech comes out with a me- 
chanical exactness that suggests constant repetition; 
and Mrs. Parvenue then proceeds to attach to Mrs. 



Pots and Kettles 93 

N.-R.'s absent back a list of her own most flagrant 
faults. 

This is, of course, ecstasy to me, though it has to be 
bottled up in a sympathetic demeanor. 

But the ecstasy effervesces and overflows a few days 
later, when I meet Mrs. Nouveau-Riche at a friend's 
house, and after a little skillful guiding of the conver- 
sation on my part, she whispers confidentially: "I be- 
lieve you are acquainted with Mrs. Parvenue. Can- 
not you hint to her that it is not good form to make her 
social aspirations so evident? It really embarrasses 
me sometimes to see her play her cards so openly. It 
makes people laugh, and in spite of her foolish little 
pretenses she is too nice a woman to be laughed at. " 

/ do not laugh. There is a pleasure too deep to be 
expressed by the crackling of thorns under a Pot — or 
a Kettle; but, like a hero of George Meredith's on a 
somewhat similar occasion, "At the two I stand 
amazed." 

If your eyes are once opened to the wonderful truth 
that other people are all self-deceived, you will find 
new vistas of enjoyment opening up before you. I 
know a man, — the most irritable, the most impatient, 
the most querulous and undisciplined of his sex, — the 
husband of a cow among women.. He has a son ten 
years old, who is a diminished replica of himself, 
snarly, fretful, spoiled. It is the father's constant 



94 The Notion-Counter 

astonishment that the child of such parents should 
display traits so unaccountable. " Of course, I have 
many faults," he magnanimously concedes; "but I 
think I can truthfully say that an irritable disposi- 
tion is not one of them. As for my wife, she has the 
temperament of a pillow; so I suppose the boy reverts 
to some remote ancestor." 

These examples of Pots and Kettles calling each 
other black will be sufficient to indicate to the thought- 
ful student the pleasure that may come to the rescuer 
of broken bits of human nature, which may be cun- 
ningly pieced together and added to the museum of the 
Society for Cynical Research. Yet the novice must 
never forget the fundamental truth that it is one's 
own worst fault that one can never see; 

for the eye sees not itself 
^' '' But by reflection, by some other things. 

For that reflection his vision is preternaturally keen. 
I myself am tolerant of all faults but one. I cannot 
bear to hear a person laugh at foibles of his fellows, or 
extract enjoyment from others* mistakes. It is like 
laughing at a blind man's blunders; and if I am ever 
guilty of it, I hope some Kettle will call me black. 



WHAT KIND OF A SNOB ARE YOU? 

NO kind! will of course be the indignant reply of 
anyone who takes the trouble to answer so irri- 
tating a question. 

"What is a snob?" should then be the pertinent 
query following the impertinent one ; and it will doubt- 
less receive a less immediate reply, because, although 
we all recognize a snob when we see him (unless we 
happen to be looking in the mirror), we do find that a 
snob has to be defined with every new generation. 

The Century Dictionary tells us that he is "one who 
is servile in spirit or conduct toward those whom he 
considers his superiors, and correspondingly proud 
and insolent toward those whom he considers his in- 
feriors." If the snob could be reduced to a formula, 
this would express him fairly well ; yet he is something 
more than that — something more and something less. 
The snob has always been one of the contemporary ex- 
pressions of the changing surface of Society — a bub- 
ble that floats on the stream of civilization and shows 
the direction of the current, when the deeper causes 
of its ebb and flow are hidden. 

In the book devoted to their interpretation seventy- 
five years ago, the highest authority on Snobs thus 
classified them : "You who despise your neighbor are a 



96 The Notion-Counter 

Snob. You who forget your own friends, meanly to 
follow after those of a higher degree, are a Snob; you 
who are ashamed of your poverty and blush for your 
calling are a Snob; so are you who boast of your pedi- 
gree or are proud of your wealth.** To this summing- 
up, we of the twentieth century can agree to-day, 
thanking Heaven that we are not as other men, and 
forgetting for the moment that Pharisee is another 
name for Snob. 

Let us glance once more at Thackeray's categorical 
list of the different varieties of snobs, and see how they 
compare with their descendants in the New World. 
First, there is the "Snob Royal *' (he has not, of course, 
his exact equivalent in democratic America). Then 
follows the "Military Snob,** who, we trust, will, at not 
too distant a day, be relegated to the realms of old, un- 
happy, far-off things, and battles long ago. There is 
the ** Clerical Snob" still existent at times, though hap- 
pily less in evidence here than in England. We shall 
all agree that the ** University Snob ** is not confined to 
Oxford and Cambridge ; nor is the "Literary Snob*' 
absent from gatherings of the Illuminati on the New 
England coast, the western plains, or the slopes of the 
Pacific. "Party-giving Snobs" were assuredly never 
more in evidence than in these days when the "right 
people" can be invited to their houses by hostesses 
whose personal friends and acquaintances are, socially 



What Kind of a Snob are You ? 97 

speaking, of the blatantly wrong. "Dining-out 
Snobs" and "Country Snobs*' still abound at other 
people's tables and at week-end parties. Yet modern 
life has created various modifications of these basic 
types, which must be included in any enumeration of 
contemporary by-products of the social order. 

We all know the Intellectual Snob, who loves to 
conjure with the names of petty poets and aspiring 
artists, with whom he has occasionally exchanged per- 
functory platitudes over the afternoon teacup. We 
have also met the Provincial Snob, whose eyebrows are 
raised in shocked surprise if a family is mentioned 
whose name is unknown in his own very local habi- 
tation. The Educational Snob is a particularly fa- 
miliar phenomenon nowadays, and a childless onlooker 
cannot fail to be amused at the attitude of parents in 
regard to the schools they select for their offspring. 
They take such elaborate pains to explain that it is not 
at all because the Hobble-de-Hoy Academy is ** rather 
mixed," that they are taking their boy out and sending 
him to the Hand-Picked School; nor has fashion any- 
thing to do with little Elsie's being sent to the Semi- 
nary of the Socially Secure : it is simply that this partic- 
ular boy and girl react unfavorably to democratic 
conditions, which are perfectly good for other people's 
children. 

Then there is that singular anomaly, the Inverted 



The Notion-Counter 



Snob, who balances a chip on his shoulder and thinks 
that everyone of wealth or social prominence is neces- 
sarily to be distrusted ; that the rich are always pre- 
tentious and worldly, while those who have few ma- 
terial possessions are themselves possessed (like Rose 
Aylmer) of every virtue, every grace. Inverted Snobs 
should take to heart the admonition of the impassioned 
Peer in lolanthe: — 

Spurn not the nobly born 

With love affected, 
Nor treat with virtuous scorn 

The well-connected. 
High rank involves no shame — 

I boast an equal claim 
With him of humble name 

To be respected! 

It is hard to sail between the Scylla of Social Climb- 
ers and the Charybdis of Intellectual Strivers, and at 
the same time to shun the hidden rocks and shoals of 
all the other snobberies. **A Society that sets up to 
be polite and ignores Arts and Letters, I hold to be a 
Snobbish Society," says Thackeray, thereby indicat- 
ing another whirlpool to be skillfully avoided. 

To most of us the word "snobbish" (which is 
almost as much in use to-day as if it were the latest 
slang) suggests, as the dictionary intimates, either one 
who toadies to the great, or one who patronizes the 



What Kind of a Snob are You ? 99 

humble. Between these two extremes of vulgarity- 
there is a large social area inhabited by the rest of us; 
but even here, in this zone of excellence, there are far 
too many who, before daring to do the simple and the 
appropriate thing, ask themselves the essentially snob- 
bish question, **What will people think?" What a 
refreshing relaxation of over-tense nerves would result 
from the abolition of slavery to conventions — not the 
conventions which are standardized good manners, 
but the conventions which ordain that perfectly un- 
important things should be performed in exactly the 
same way by totally different people ! The woman who 
will not ask Mrs. Goldcoin to lunch, because she has to 
give her peas from the can instead of from the South, 
is quite as much of a snob as Mrs. Goldcoin would be, 
if she declined the invitation for the same reason. 

If only money (and the lack of it) and social position 
(and the lack of it) could be taken naturally, and not 
become beams and motes in the eyes of the observers 
and observed! 

Of course, pretense is of the essence of snobbishness; 
but who is there so sure of authenticity that he can 
afford to throw stones at pretenders? It is hard for 
the star to remember always that his glory can never 
be the glory of the sun or of the moon, and to realize 
that a genuine twinkle is better than a beam of imi- 
tation gold. 



100 



The Notion-Counter 



The day of the twentieth century, being still young, 
is much more subtly lighted and shaded than the un- 
compromising black and white of Thackeray's Vic- 
torian noon. We grope in a mist of half-definitions and 
contradictions. We are no longer either bad or good — 
we are both bad and good. We are sincere and insin- 
cere, genuine and artificial, unpretentious and, at 
times, snobbish. To avoid being snobs, we must learn 
to look relentlessly at our own motives and our own 
actions, and to be sure that they always express our- 
selves, and nobody else. If we live on a corned-beef- 
and-cabbage basis when we are alone, we need not 
aspire to terrapin and artichokes when we entertain 
our more prosperous friends, but can compromise on 
— let us say — chicken and cranberry sauce. A pro- 
fessor who tries to live like a banker succeeds only in 

living like a snob. 

** Fate has comfortably 
appointed gold plate for 
some, and has bidden 
others contentedly to 
wear the willow-pat- 
tern." That is the thrust 
with which Thackeray 
finds the weak spot in 
my own armor ; for some- 
times, when my superiors 




What Kind of a Snob are You? 101 

come to dinner, I must confess to dusting off my 
Lowestoft plates and serving coffee out of Dresden 
china, with the air of one more accustomed to porcelain 
than to crockery ! And so I must answer the question 
I ask others by confessing that I am the kind of snob 
who does not always ** contentedly wear the willow- 
pattern." 

What kind of a snob are you ? 



SUCH STUFF AS DREAMS 
ARE MADE ON! 

FOR weeks I had been explaining to my friends 
that I felt very tired ; and evidently the disease 
was contagious, for the more I described my sen- 
sations, the more weary did the faces of my listeners 
become. I think the first conscious symptoms of fa- 
tigue came after three younger women had told me 
that I was looking very old, and very plain. Of course, 
what they said was, "You look tired, dear"; but I 
knew what they meant. 

At last I determined to take a definite step and 
consult a really up-to-date physician. I reached this 
decision one somnolent spring afternoon, as I lay on 
my sofa and listened to the eloquent discourse of a 
young friend who always keeps in touch with the latest 
curative fads. Her enthusiasm on the subject of Dr. 
Mendum was of so dynamic a quality that its appeal 
was irresistible. *'He is perfectly wonderful," she 
assured me, "and so open-minded. He thinks there 
IS something in almost everything, but he doesn't label 
himself anything.'' 

"I am sorry if he is too open-minded," I objected, 
"because that is just one of my own most alarming 



Such Stuff as Dreams are Made on! 103 

symptoms. My mind is open, — at both ends, — and 
whatever goes in falls out. In fact, it 's more of a tube 
than a mind." 

**0h, Dr. Mendum's mind is n't a bit like that ! " 
his loyal disciple hastened to assure me. " I only mean 
that he takes what is best out of both the old and the 
new schools of thought. He has almost all the letters 
in the alphabet after his name (except perhaps M and 
D), and really his cures are quite uncanny." 

"I 'm afraid I am not ill enough to interest so re- 
markable a man," I began; "I am just awfully tired, 
and I feel — " But as usual I was interrupted. 

** Oh, that does n't make the least difference. Why, 
Lily Billings went to him when she did n't have a thing 
the matter with her, and he was perfectly wonderful! 
He told her just how to keep on feeling well by all kinds 
of different methods, such as deep breathing, and 
rhythmical dancing, and muscle-control, and posture, 
and dreaming the right kind of dreams, and eating 
vitamines and, oh, lots of other things. He told her 
she had n't thought about Health enough and that she 
must be reeducated. She can't talk about anything 
but Dr. Mendum. It 's so interesting to hear her." 

"Well, I shall certainly make an appointment with 
the omniscient one at the earliest possible opportunity," 
I replied. "Perhaps he can teach me to conquer these 
waves of drowsiness which threaten to submerge me, 



104 The Notion-Counter 

even while you are talking to me. I have the Sleepy 
Sickness." 

The first disengaged moment which this eclectic 
practitioner could dedicate to me, over the telephone 
and through his secretary, was a week later, and, punc- 
tual to the moment, I found myself in his cheery wait- 
ing-room. A scientifically Christian spirit of optim- 
ism pervaded the apartment. The pictures on the 
walls were all illustrative of deeds of helpfulness per- 
formed by men and women who simply radiated love. 
A few well-chosen quotations from books of religious 
devotion, modern psychology, and Eastern philosophy 
were scattered helpfully about the walls. Pink gera- 
niums bloomed in the window, and (lest one should 
feel enervated by so much cheer) a skeleton in the cor- 
ner — not in the cupboard — suggested to the recep- 
tive mind of the waiting patient that he was in the 
office of an anatomist, — a scientific student of funda- 
mental facts like bones, — and not in the studio of a 
dilettante. On the table were all the latest books 
on Psychoanalysis, Newest Thought, and Highest 
Thinking, to say nothing of many of the recognized 
scientific journals of medicine and orthopaedics, and 
pamphlets on the Value of Osteopathy were scattered 
with a lavish hand through this luxuriant garden of 
budding facts, fads, and fancies. 

After I had had time to absorb the various emana- 



Such Stuff as Dreams are Made on! 105 

tions arising from this therapeutic potpourri, Dr. Men- 
dum came bustUng in, an embodiment of confidence, 
prosperity, and health. 

" I won't apologize for keeping you waiting," he an- 
nounced cheerfully, "because these few moments of 
concentration and absorption, in a carefully planned 
environment, are really the first steps in your cure. 
Now if you will come into my consulting-room and tell 
me, quite frankly, just what troubles you, I feel sure 
that I can help you very, very much." 

I followed him with all the eagerness of egotism re- 
leased from suppression. At last I had found someone 
who would listen to me — who even asked to hear how 
I felt ! What matter if I should have to pay later the 
individual fees of a multiple personality — I should 
have had my day! For fifteen minutes I talked elo- 
quently, while Dr. Mendum took flatteringly copious 
notes of my every word. When I had finished, he 
turned the light of a radiant smile upon me. 

"I understand your case completely," he assured 
me, "and I can guarantee a cure. Of course the spine 
is responsible for a great deal of the trouble, but some 
rather heroic local treatment will relieve that at once. 
Your nerves are in shreds, and your digestion has gone 
completely to pieces, but some severe exercises in 
stretching the muscles will help you very much, espe- 
cially when pursued in connection with a strict regime 



106 The Notion-Counter 

of balanced foods, which I will prescribe for you after 
making the tests of reactions to inoculations. Later, I 
shall give you some pills — medicine still has its value 
on this plane of consciousness," he conceded with a 
smile of liberality; "but before we try mental sugges- 
tion (with perhaps just a touch of hypnosis), I will get 
right to work on the spine." 

I bowed my head, partly in acquiescence and partly 
in order that he might see how stiff and tense my neck- 
muscles were. The next moment I felt as if an angry 
gorilla had leaped between my shoulder blades and 
was torturing me with fierce clutches and insane 
poundings. He worried me as a cat worries a mouse, 
jerking my head almost out of its socket, twisting my 
arms, searching out — with fingers of iron — unsus- 
pected knobs in my vertebral column, each one of 
which appeared to be in a state of acute inflammation. 
I cried for mercy, I groaned, I implored him to cease. 
Finally, some good angel inspired me to call aloud, "I 
am cured!" and it was not till I made this public ac- 
knowledgment that a miracle had been wrought that he 
took me off the rack and removed the thumbscrews. 

"That is very satisfactory," he said sweetly, with- 
out a sign of fatigue from our recent combat. " Now I 
am going to give you a few hints about deep breathing, 
which the Yogi have found so satisfying; and while you 
are drawing in strength and healing, I am going to read 



Such Stuff as Dreams are Made on ! 1 07 

you a few paragraphs culled from the ten greatest phi- 
losophers of all the ages, and twined into one perfect 
whole by myself. It tells us all we need to know on 
this earthly plane." 

He then taught me to breathe the way I have always 
breathed; and while I lay panting on the sofa, he in- 
toned various helpful phrases from such miscellaneous 
sources as St. Paul, Buddha, Emerson, Mrs. Eddy, 
Nietzsche, Freud, Ralph Waldo Trine, Marcus Aure- 
lius, Roosevelt, and Annie Payson Call. This acted 
like a lullaby; and just as I felt myself sinking into a 
perfectly suitable combination of Heaven, Nirvana, 
and Coma, he approached my huddled form and made 
some mystical passes on my forehead with a clammy 
forefinger. 

"Now you are going to relax," he chanted. "All 
inhibitions will be removed. Fear will steal away. 
Your subconscious mind will be revealed without dis- 
guise, in all its hideous depravity. The barriers of the 
will are down. You are going to tell me dreadful 
things about your past life — things so terrible that 
even you yourself have not dared to face them for per- 
haps threescore years. You will dream, and I shall in- 
terpret your dreams. You will tell me of A Man who 
once came into your life long years ago. It may be the 
memory of that man that makes you tired. Now sleep 
— sleep — go to sleep." 



08 



The Notion-Counter 



** I won*t go to sleep ! " I indignantly exclaimed, and 
I pulled myself upright — only to face the dazed looks 
of the young friend who was sitting by my sofa-side, 
still expatiating on the super-manly qualities of Dr. 
Mendum. 

"But you have been asleep for two whole minutes,'* 
she expostulated reproachfully, "and just as I was tell- 
ing you how wonderfully 
Dr. Mendum combines all 
the best elements of mod- 
ern therapeutics." 

I started to my feet with- 
out a vestige of fatigue. 
"I was asleep, but I am 
awake ! " I cried. "My eyes 
were closed, but they are 
now open! I have been cured by Psycho-anal-osteo- 
pathologi-calesthenic-ology ! " 

"For Heaven's sake, what 's that ?" asked my poor 
young friend, alarmed for my reason. 

"That 's the scientific name for the School of 
Thought my eclectic dream-doctor represents," I ex- 
plained, " but it 's really simpler to call it just a mixture 
of Freud and Fraud." 




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